Climate Imagination
At the Center for Science and the Imagination, we have pursued a number of projects exploring climate futures that are hopeful, but also rooted in scientific and community realities. Many of these projects involve bringing together fiction authors with scientists, engineers, and policymakers, but also with visual artists, humanities scholars, and other thinkers working at the intersection of narrative, futures, ecology, and environmental systems.
In December 2025, the MIT Press will publish Climate Imagination: Dispatches from Hopeful Futures, which collects short stories, essays, and visual art from contributors across 17 countries. The book traces pathways to hopeful futures shaped by climate action and grounded in the complexities of diverse physical and human geographies. An open-access digital edition of the book, The Climate Action Almanac, was published in 2024, and is available alongside the print edition.
These publications, along with the Climate Imagination Fellowship program we launched in 2021, are supported by the ClimateWorks Foundation. One of our fellows, Vandana Singh, and a senior advisor to the project, Kim Stanley Robinson, delivered TED Talks in 2021. As part of the fellowship program, we have also hosted public events on climate, society, art, and policy with a number of organizations, including the British Library, the Woodwell Climate Research Center, the UK Science and Innovation Network, and the Hay Festival Arequipa.
From 2016 through 2021, we published Everything Change volumes one, two, and three, collecting the top stories from a set of three global climate fiction writing contests that attracted submissions from more than 70 countries. Each contest was judged by a leading climate fiction author and a team of experts in creative writing and climate science, sustainability, and environmental studies.
In 2018, Columbia University Press published A Year Without a Winter, a collection of fiction, nonfiction, and art that juxtaposes our current climate crisis with the calamitous “year without a summer” in 1816, caused by the eruption of Indonesia’s Mount Tambora the previous year. That nineteenth-century climate anomaly was the backdrop for the famous literary “dare” that would give rise to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and in this book, we issued our own dare to writers at a workshop in 2016, at that time the hottest year on historical record.
Through ASU’s Imagination and Climate Futures Initiative, we have hosted several leading authors working at the intersection of climate and narrative: in 2014, Margaret Atwood (the MaddAddam trilogy); in 2015, Paolo Bacigalupi (The Windup Girl, The Water Knife); in 2017, Kim Stanley Robinson (Green Earth, The Ministry for the Future); and in 2019, Omar El Akkad (American War).
Hopeful Climate Futures through Speculative Storytelling (Washington, DC)
Register (in person) Register (Zoom) Date and time: Tuesday, June 4, 2024, 12:00-1:30pm Eastern / 9:00-10:30am Arizona When we think of climate, the stories we tell about the future are
Andrew Dana Hudson: Our Shared Storm
Speculative fiction writer and sustainability researcher Andrew Dana Hudson discusses his book, five interlocking novelettes exploring the possible realities of our climate future.
Crafting Climate Futures: From Story to Policy (Online)
The UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow presents an opportunity for decisive global action amidst escalating climate chaos. Now, more than ever, we need narratives of positive climate futures
A sci-fi story of Earth’s renewal
EcoFutures Climate Justice Project
Today’s escalating climate chaos is intensified by global threats to democracy, violent backlashes to migration, and horrific biodiversity loss. Furthermore, environmental degradation is exacerbating existing inequalities, with poor and marginalized
Imagining Our Climate Futures (Online)
If we hope to achieve the global will and cooperation needed to meet the challenges of the climate crisis, we need stories of hope and transformation, not just disaster and
The Days After Tomorrow: Climate Fiction for the Future
Can we reimagine our relationship with nature and protect the future? How can we marshal our collective imagination to accelerate global transformations and move towards a sustainable way of life?
Workshop on Reimagining Climate Futures
Join the Center for Science and the Imagination, the Journal of Science Policy & Governance (JSPG), and the UK Science and Innovation Network for a workshop that brings together innovative
Postcards from the Future
Create a digital postcard from the future, with concept art by João Queiroz.
Meet the Climate Imagination Fellows
Unlocking Our Climate Imagination
When we imagine our climate future, it’s easy to drift towards catastrophe, especially in view of this summer’s shocking examples of climate chaos—from floods and sinkholes to heat domes and
Moscow author’s story lands in climate fiction anthology
Moscow-Pullman Daily News (Idaho)
Indigenous Futurisms And Climate Fiction
Tom Maxedon Word podcast, KJZZ 91.5 public radio
Everything Change: An Anthology of Climate Fiction, Volume III
A collection of short stories by writers from around the world, exploring the climate crisis and how human responses to it will shape the futures we will inhabit. Featuring winning stories from our 2020 Everything Change Climate Fiction Contest.
Arizona State University’s Free Solarpunk Anthology is All About Optimistic Futures
Andrew Liptak, Tor.com
Cities of Light: A discussion on the impact of a solar future
Justin Spangenthal, The State Press
Everything Change Climate Fiction Contest 2020
What would our world look like if we actually respected and lived within planetary boundaries? We’re excited to announce our third global climate fiction short story contest. Learn more…
17 Writers on the Role of Fiction in Addressing Climate Change
by Amy Brady, Literary Hub
Five ASU affiliates who are using their art to make change in their communities
by Chelsea Hofmann, The State Press
Can Climate Change Fiction Build Consensus, Empathy?
by Brooke Ruth and Mark Sauer, KPBS (San Diego)
When ‘Everything’ Is Changing, Stories Have A Role To Play
by Jason Sheehan, NPR Books
How sci-fi could help solve climate change
by Zoe Sayler, Grist
How sci-fi could help solve climate change
By Zoe Sayler Grist
In the face of climate chaos, writers find grief and hope
by Joey Eschrich, ASU Now
A New Cli-Fi Collection You Can Download For Free
by Amy Brady, Chicago Review of Books
The Story of the American War with Omar El Akkad
THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 2019, 6:00PM | Ventana Ballroom, Memorial Union In this year’s annual Imagination and Climate Futures Lecture, Omar El Akkad talks about how he came to write his debut novel, American War – the events that inspired it, the references buried throughout the text and the places he visited to research the book.
Everything Change: An Anthology of Climate Fiction, Volume II
A collection of short stories by an international group of authors, drawn from our 2018 Everything Change Climate Fiction Contest, plus a foreword by our lead judge, Kim Stanley Robinson.
Get the book
A free book of science fiction from around the world about climate change, introduced by Kim Stanley Robinson
by Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing
Literally, Stories of Climate Change
by Joey Eschrich and Angie Dell, iMPACT magazine
Margaret Atwood, Prophet?
Ed Finn
Slate – Future Tense
Everything Change: An Anthology of Climate Fiction
Features short stories from our 2016 Climate Fiction Short Story Contest along with a foreword by science fiction legend and contest judge Kim Stanley Robinson, and an interview with renowned climate fiction author Paolo Bacigalupi.
Author Margaret Atwood to discuss creative writing, science at ASU
This article originally appeared in ASU News. Internationally renowned novelist and environmental activist Margaret Atwood will visit Arizona State University this November to discuss the relationship between art and science,