by Our Annual Spring Gathering is an opportunity for our extended futures family to come together and socia
lize, and dig a little deeply in new, emerging, or even neglected topics. The influence of science fiction on futures is our focus this year on April 17-18. We’ve got an awesome line-up of presenters and topics ready to go! We’ve been talking about doing this topic for a few years and finally I was able to persuade alum, futurist, and sci fi guy Tim Morgan to teach a summer elective on Sci Fi Futures, so we decided to get the ball rolling by focusing our Spring Gathering on the topic. Tim is a past chair of FenCon, a literary science fiction and fantasy convention.
In our curriculum, we’ve been exploring the pioneering work of futurist Brian David Johnson on “science fiction prototyping.” In short, the method uses science fiction as a way to imagine our future in a whole new way. It’s a significant shift from reading sci fi for provocative ideas to applying it as a distinct project methodology.
Sci Fi Futures joins a list of previous topics since we started meeting regularly every Spring:
- Introducing the Future (2019)
- Scanning the Fringe (2018)
- Good Futures Work (2017)
- Blockchain (2016)
- Technology Acceleration (2015)
- Student Needs 2025+ (2014)
- City Making in the 21st Century (2013)
- After Capitalism (2012)
- Methods and Values (2011)
If you’d like to attend the Spring Gathering in Houston on Friday April 17 and Saturday the 18th, shoot Laura (laura.schlehuber@gmail.com) an email. — Andy Hines
This is great, and I fully support the expanded use of SF in futures work. I’d like to hear about the results of the workshop.
Don’t forget that literature reviews and science fiction prototyping are good but don’t exhaust the use of science fictioning in foresight. I’ve written a fair amount about the use of SF as a tool for synthesizing findings. Brian’s SF prototyping is a way to explore idea spaces, but what writers actually get hired to do, as often as not, is to use fiction to deliver a set of ideas that have already been developed by foresight practitioners. This is a very different activity; it’s what I wrote my Master’s thesis on. In this case, the story author is trying very hard *not* to come up with new ideas, but rather is trying to synthesize and deliver the ideas provided by the foresight professionals. This demands a different approach than the prototyping method.
Hi Karl,
Thanks for that helpful addition. I know Tim’s kept in touch. It would be super-awesome if you could make (it’s a long drive!). We’d find you some time on the agenda. If not, we’ll try and take good notes.