Future Tense Project
Future Tense is a partnership between ASU, the New America Foundation and Slate magazine to explore emerging technologies and their transformative effects on society and public policy. Future Tense hosts events and public conversations, and publishes original content from policymakers, scientists, humanists and journalists, including many ASU scholars, on Slate
Future Tense Fiction Book Launch: Washington, DC
Join us to celebrate the launch of Future Tense Fiction: Stories of Tomorrow, a new anthology of science fiction from Future Tense, with France Córdova, director of the National Science
Future Tense Fiction: Double Spiral
By Marcy Kelly
Future Tense Fiction Book Launch: New York
Join us at the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice to celebrate the launch of Future Tense Fiction: Stories of Tomorrow, a new anthology of science fiction from Future Tense,
Future Tense Fiction: What the Dead Man Said
By Chinelo Onwualu
Future Tense Fiction Book Launch: San Francisco
Join us to celebrate the launch of Future Tense Fiction: Stories of Tomorrow, a new anthology of science fiction from Future Tense, with award-winning fiction authors Annalee Newitz, Meg Elison,
Future Tense Fiction Book Launch: Phoenix
Join us to celebrate the launch of Future Tense Fiction: Stories of Tomorrow, a new anthology of science fiction from Future Tense, with award-winning fiction authors Paolo Bacigalupi and Maureen
Announcing Future Tense Fiction: Stories of Tomorrow
by Torie Bosch, SLATE
Review: Future Tense Fiction
Kirkus Reviews
Future Tense Fiction: Zero in Babel
By E. Lily Yu
Future Tense Fiction: Stories of Tomorrow
An anthology of mind-bending science fiction short stories by some of the top authors in the field, drawn from our Future Tense Fiction project. How will living with scientific upheaval and technological transformation change the world–and us?
2019 Campbell and Sturgeon Awards Winners
Locus Magazine
Future Tense Fiction: Space Leek
By Chen Qiufan
Starred Review:Future Tense Fiction: Stories of Tomorrow
Publishers Weekly
Future Tense Fiction: No Moon and Flat Calm
by Elizabeth Bear
Future Tense Fiction: The Song Between Worlds
By Indrapramit Das
The Arisen
by Louisa Hall
Mpendulo: The Answer
By Nosipho Dumisa
Thoughts and Prayers
by Ken Liu
When Robot and Crow Saved East St. Louis
by Annalee Newitz
When We Were Patched
Future Tense Fiction: Safe Surrender
Sci-Fi & Fantasy Short Fiction Roundup: April 2018
Maria Haskins
Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog
Future Tense Fiction: Domestic Violence
Future Tense Fiction: Mother of Invention
A new short story by the author of Marvel’s Black Panther: Long Live the King, Nnedi Okorafor.
Future Tense Fiction: The Minnesota Diet
A new short story from the author of the Nebula Award–winning All the Birds in the Sky, Charlie Jane Anders.
Workshop: “Writing to Change Minds” with Slate’s Torie Bosch
Stubbornness may be the defining characteristic of the moment we’re in. People seem increasingly reluctant to listen to other points of view or deviate from their tribe. So how can
Space Is Not a Void
By Joey Eschrich and Ed Finn
Future Tense – Slate
Margaret Atwood, Prophet?
Ed Finn
Slate – Future Tense
What Algorithms Want
RSVP here >> Algorithms tell us what to read, where to go, and whom to date…but do we really understand them? It’s easy to think of algorithms as magical beings,
Future Tense Fiction: “Mr. Thursday,” by Emily St. John Mandel
“She’d seen the coat before in this moment, exiting this train, here. Every face in the crowd looked somehow familiar.” Read the full story on Slate.com
How Frankenstein’s Monster Became Sexy
Joey Eschrich
Slate – Future Tense
Future Tense Fiction
In April 2016 CSI launched a new experiment with the Future Tense Channel at Slate: a regular writing series featuring original science fiction stories by well-known authors. We launched Future
Paolo Bacigalupi Uses Fiction and Law to Debate Whether Robots Are Capable of Murder
Law prof ponders: If a highly advanced robot kills, is it murder or product liability?
Future Tense Fiction: “Mika Model,” by Paolo Bacigalupi
“The girl, the robot … this thing—I’d seen her before, all right. I’d seen her in technology news stories about advanced learning node networks…”
Algorithms Are Like Kirk, Not Spock
When technologists describe their hotshot new system for trading stocks or driving cars, the algorithm at its heart always seems to emerge from a magical realm of Spock-like rationality and mathematical perfection. Algorithms can save lives or make money, the argument goes, because they are built on the foundations of mathematics: logical rigor, conceptual clarity, and utter consistency. Math is perfect, right? And algorithms are made out of math.
What Algorithms Want
We spend an awful lot of time now thinking about what algorithms know about us: the ads we see online, the deep archive of our search history, the automated photo-tagging of our families. We don’t spend as much time asking what algorithms want.
The Internet of Slow Things
Higher education is obsessed with 3-D printing. Makerspaces and fab labs are sprouting like extruded weeds on college campuses, and everyone from business school deans to librarians are asking how 3-D printing and fabrication can be implemented in teaching.
Apocalypse Moon: Neal Stephenson on his new novel, Seveneves, and the future of humanity
An interview with Neal Stephenson about his new novel, Seveneves, humanity’s resilience, and more.
Take a picture. It’ll last longer
An experimental philosopher’s project to document 100 or even 1,000 years of change with a single photograph.
Joey Eschrich
Slate – Future Tense
A Crazy Experiment Attempts to Document Change With a Photo Taken Over 1,000 Years
A new project by experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats at Arizona State University involves creating simple, incredibly durable pinhole cameras that will slowly create a single image over the course of a century or a millennium.
An Interview With Margaret Atwood
Climate fiction, or “cli fi,” can be a dreary genre. Storytellers like to make a grim business of climate change, populating their narratives with a humorless onslaught of death, destruction, drowned monuments, and starving children. Margaret Atwood is the conspicuous exception, somehow managing to tackle the subject, including these familiar elements, with deadpan wit and an irreverent playfulness, making it both more interesting and believable. The flood is coming, her MaddAddam trilogy promises, but there is hope.
An Illuminated Manuscript About Space Exploration, Science Fiction, and Physics
You just don’t see many illuminated manuscripts these days. There’s a good reason why: They take a long time to make. I learned this recently when I set out to commission a thoroughly modern illuminated manuscript: not a religious text, but an interview with theoretical physicist and cosmologist Paul Davies, a professor at Arizona State University and the author of books like How to Build a Time Machine.
Future Tense: Can We Imagine Our Way to a Better Future?
On October 2, 2014, Future Tense and Issues in Science and Technology hosted an event in Washington, DC inspired by Project Hieroglyph.
Innovation Starvation, the Next Generation
Humankind has lots of great ideas for the future. We need people to carry them out.
Neal Stephenson
Slate – Future Tense
Don’t Diss Dystopias
Sci-fi’s warning tales are as important as its optimistic stories.
Ramez Naam
Slate – Future Tense
The Dystopian City and Urban Policy
Science fiction has inspired scientists and political activists, but it should be an inspiration for municipal governments too.
Annalee Newitz
Slate – Future Tense
Meeting My Protagonist
When I wrote a novel about a Nigerian space program, I didn’t expect it to be so close to the truth.
Deji Bryce Olukotun
Slate – Future Tense
Project Hieroglyph Story: “The Day It All Ended”
A short story from Hieroglyph, a new science fiction anthology.
Charlie Jane Anders
Slate-Future Tense
Only Science Fiction Can Save Us!
What sci-fi gets wrong about income inequality.
Lee Konstantinou
Slate – Future Tense
The Inspiration Drought
Forget the Tricorder
Why gadgets aren’t the coolest part of science fiction.
Joey Eschrich
Slate – Future Tense
An Aerialist, Two Clowns, and a Robot Walk Into a Carnival …
In his 1984 film The Terminator and its sequels, James Cameron imagines a dystopic future in which armies of intelligent robots move with startling suddenness from positions of servility to utter and violent dominance, destroying civilization and driving humankind to the brink of extinction.
This, of course, is pure science fiction. There’s little reason to believe things will unfold that way. First, they would take all our jobs and wreck our economy.
This is the nightmare narrative of our future with robots and artificial intelligence. The utopian version of this tale—one accepted by many powerful people in industry and government—involves a …read more
Confess Your Digital Sins
A voice cries out in the desert:
“Know thyself, not thy selfies!”
“Digital media will not save you!”
“The zero is not whole and the one is not The One!”
Technically, we’re not in the desert—we’re in a dusty parking lot in downtown Phoenix. And the voice is not coming from the Prophet Isaiah, but from professor Ron Broglio, whom I’ve ordained as a Minister of the Digital Tabernacle. As people wander into the massive circus tent at Arizona State University’s Emerge: Carnival of the Future, they are greeted by a pair of shifty evangelists preaching the analog Word. (Disclosure: …read more
How to Make Music With Drones
The good thing about performing music with drones is that they always show up for rehearsal on time. The bad thing is that they might suddenly drop out of the air and onto your head.
I learned all this while putting together a piece called “Drone Confidential” for Arizona State University’s Emerge, a “Carnival of the Future” that was held in Phoenix recently. Emerge is an annual circus of cool new technologies in performance, dedicated to showing how artists and machines can work together to create something awesome. …read more
What if Computers Know You Better Than You Know Yourself?
I recently read about the launches of both an “ultrasecure” mobile phone for protecting privacy and a clip-on camera that takes a picture of everything you do at 30-second intervals. Our cultural relationship with data is more complicated and contradictory than it has ever been, and our debates on the subject almost always center on privacy. But privacy, the notion that only you should be able to control information about yourself, cloaks a deeper tension between information and meaning, between databases and insights.
Event Recap: Former Intel CEO Craig R. Barrett on the Future of Moore’s Law
By Sarah Rothbard This post originally appeared on Zócalo Public Square. Zócalo Public Square is a partnership of the New America Foundation and Arizona State University; Future Tense is a
Neil deGrasse Tyson on Van Gogh’s Role in Space Exploration and Other Great Tales of Science
By Torie Bosch Science panels don’t normally involve a striptease, even a G-rated one. But on Saturday, March 30, Neil deGrasse Tyson took off his shirt to prove a point
Are Cyborg Humans (and Animals) Still True Life Forms? A Future Tense Panel Recap.
By Adam Sneed Cyborgs have arrived on Earth, but there’s no reason to worry. They’re nothing like the cold machine-men from The Terminator. Cybernetic technologies that integrate with the human
Is It Time To Take Cyborg Rights Seriously? A Q&A With Neil Harbisson.
Torie Bosch Slate – Future Tense
Celebrate National Science Fiction Day by Learning to Live in the Future
Celebrate National Science Fiction Day by Learning To Live in the Future
By Ed Finn It’s 2013, people—we are living in the future. Since the news is still awash with problems we created for ourselves decades or centuries ago (the permanent fiscal crisis, gun control, the political powder-keg that is the Middle East), it may have escaped your notice that today is also National Science Fiction Day.