by Our Annual Spring Gathering is an opportunity for our extended futures family to come together and socialize, and dig a little deeply in new, emerging, and or even neglected topics. The influence of science fiction on futures, particularly Horizon 3 futures, is pretty obvious for most (although I recall a boss who felt it was “useless” in terms of application to “real” futures work). Several 
science fictions authors have navigated in to professional futurist work. Bruce Sterling and David Brin come to mind from the past, and Karl Albrecht more recently
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.
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
Lesson 1: Calling Science Fiction “Sci Fi” too often will summon the angry Ghost of Harlan Ellison to haunt you. Nobody wants that. Harlan is hard to settle down once woken. Best to call it “SF” and let sleeping curmudgeons lie. 😉