Imaginary College

The Imaginary College is a group of outstanding creative thinkers, researchers, practitioners, and mad geniuses that represents one of the core missions of the Center for Science and the Imagination: to seek out intelligent life wherever it resides in the universe, and to get it on our side. Through the Imaginary College, CSI partners with and celebrates the individuals and groups who are already advancing our mission of fresh, creative and ambitious thinking about the future.

Imaginary College Fellows

Rebels, hackers, wizards, inventors, and alchemists driving pathbreaking research, teaching and outreach projects.

Madeline Ashby -

Madeline Ashby is a science fiction writer, futurist, speaker, teacher, and immigrant living in Toronto. She has worked with Intel Labs, the Institute for the Future, SciFutures, Nesta, Data & Society, The Atlantic Council, the Center for Science and the Imagination, Changeist, [...]

Kevin Bankston -

Kevin Bankston is the Director of New America’s Open Technology Institute (OTI), where he works in the public interest to ensure that all communities have access to communications technologies that are both open and secure. He previously served as OTI’s Policy [...]

Laura Cechanowicz - Laura Cechanowicz joins the School of Arts, Media and Engineering as an assistant professor, jointly appointed with the graphic information technology program in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. Cechanowicz

Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay -

Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay is senior researcher at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo, where he works on Climate Fiction, Quantum Fiction, and Medical Science Fiction within the Lifetimes framework.[...]

Brenda Cooper -

Brenda Cooper is the author of nine science fiction and fantasy books. Her most recent novels are POST (Espec Books, 2016) and Spear of Light (Pyr, 2016). Her other works include Edge of Dark (Pyr, 2015), The Creative Fire (Pyr, 2012), and The Diamond Deep (Pyr, 2013) as [...]

Photo of Jenna Hanchey, a white woman with long dark blond hair, wearing a blue sleeveless shirt, standing in front of a wall of leaves.

Jenna N. Hanchey -

Jenna N. Hanchey (she/her) is a BSFA award-shortlisted speculative fiction writer, Ignyte and British Fantasy award-shortlisted narrator, and Associate Professor of Rhetoric & Critical/Cultural Studies at Arizona State University. She's a cohost of the podcasts Griots & Galaxies and Just Keep Writing, and narrator for Strange Horizons and Simultaneous Times. [...]

Andrew Dana Hudson -

Andrew Dana Hudson is a speculative fiction writer, sustainability researcher, and futurist. He is the author of Our Shared Storm: A Novel of Five Climate Futures, as well as over twenty short stories appearing in Slate Future Tense, Lightspeed Magazine, Escape Pod, Vice Terraform, MIT Technology Review, Grist, and many more. His nonfiction has appeared in Slate, Jacobin, and more. [...]

Brian David Johnson - Brian David Johnson is an applied futurist who works with organizations to develop actionable 10-15 year visions of what it will feel like to live in the future. His methods are futurecasting and threatcasting [...]

A white man with dark hair swept up from his face and tinted round metal glasses, wearing a white button down shirt open at the top button, smiles directly at the camera.

Kyle Law - Kyle Fiore Law is a social psychologist, postdoctoral research scholar in the Intergenerational Decisions and Effective Action Lab (ASU’s Global Futures School of Sustainability), and a member of the Imaginary College at

Deji Bryce Olukotun -

Deji Bryce Olukotun is the author of two novels and his fiction has appeared in five different book collections. His novel After the Flare won the 2018 Philip K. Dick special citation award, and was chosen as one of the best books of 2017 by The Guardian [...]

Corey Pressman -

Corey S. Pressman is a writer, artist, and teacher living in Portland, Oregon. He has published poetry, academic works, and short stories.

Vandana Singh - Vandana Singh was born and raised in India and currently lives in the Boston area, where she is a professor of physics at Framingham State University, and a science fiction writer. Although her Ph.D. is in particle physics, in recent years she has [...]

A woman with short hair in a leather blazer smiles looking directly into the camera with her arms crossed casually

Lisa Kay Solomon -

Lisa Kay Solomon is an educator, author, and social entrepreneur who designs environments, experiences, and classes to help people expand their futures, adapt to complexities, and build civic fellowship. She is a designer in residence at the Stanford d.school in California, where she focuses on bridging the disciplines of futures[...]

Image of Zoyander Street seated in a chair, holding a mug.

Zoyander Street - Dr. Zoyander Street (they/them) is a neuroqueer and disabled writer, researcher, and digital artist. They live and work in the "People's Republic of South Yorkshire," England, creating interactive media [...]

a man with light skin and a dark beard and hair, in a navy blue jacket over a light blue shirt, looking directly at the camera and smiling with his hands in his pockets.

Stylianos Syropoulos - Stylianos (Stelios) Syropoulos is an Assistant Professor in the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University. There he directs the Intergenerational Decisions and Effective Action (IDEA) Lab. The IDEA lab conducts

Imaginary College Philosophers

Sages and provocateurs who epitomize imaginative thinking and practice and provide inspiration for our work.

Margaret Atwood - A word after a word after a word is power.

Paolo Bacigalupi - Fiction is optimistic or unrealistic enough to demand that there should be a meaningful narrative.

Kathryn Cramer - “The truth is a stranger...Not always welcome by daylight.”

Cory Doctorow - "If you want to double your success rate, triple your failure rate."

Don Marinelli - “Trick suffering into becoming creativity - that’s magic.”

Kim Stanley Robinson - “Very few people ever bother to find out what other people really think. They are willing to accept whatever they are told about anyone sufficiently distant.”

Neal Stephenson looks off into the future.

Neal Stephenson - “See, the world is full of things more powerful than us. But if you know how to catch a ride, you can go places."

Bruce Sterling - “Don't become a well-rounded person. Well-rounded people are smooth and dull. Become a thoroughly spiky person. Grow spikes from every angle. Stick in their throats like a pufferfish.”