How we imagine the future has impacts on our everyday lives and societies. To research these impacts, we need to grapple with speculation, uncertainty and multiple possibilities. How can we study people’s imaginations and the effects of things that haven’t happened yet? One avenue involves taking seriously speculative fiction.

Stories about alternative realities and far-flung futures can tell us a lot about how societies change. Stories shape what we desire and anticipate, powering the shared ways that we make sense of our world. Bringing speculative storytelling into research can help us to understand how and why some visions of the future become significant and meaningful...