Future Fiction – American Alliance of Museums

Seeding the Future at the New Children’s Museum

By Elizabeth Merritt

I’m a huge fan of speculative fiction—stories with the power to immerse us in the daily reality of possible futures deeply and viscerally. We can fall in love with fiction in a way we rarely love academic research or formal foresight. As a …
A Self-care Practice: Spend Some Time in Utopia

By Elizabeth Merritt

“Utopia is born of the hunger for something better, but it relies on hope as the engine for imagining such a future.” –Marge Piercy The news has been pretty bleak for the past 18 months, and I struggle to find a few optimistic …
Trading Labor for Food

By Elizabeth Merritt

As I revisit my “diary of the future” from a decade ago, I find myself examining how my speculative vision of 2019 has converged with or diverged from reality. Some of my stories were, unfortunately, spot on. Anti-immigrant …
In Which Penny and Frank Wash Up at the Villa

By Elizabeth Merritt

The best part of futuring is inviting other folks to play along. For the fifth entry in my 2008 diary of the future, I recruited my real-life companions to contribute to the plot, and they jumped in with gusto. (Thank you Penny!) We …
My Story Part 4: How to Get Trapped in a Tuscan Villa

By Elizabeth Merritt

Ten years ago, when I wrote my fictional diary of 2019, I used the scenario created by the Institute for the Future for the Superstruct forecasting game as a lens through which to reexamine my daily life. On the way to work, I’d …
Day 3: A Visit from the Authorities

By Elizabeth Merritt

This is the third installment of a “diary of the future” I wrote a decade ago, exploring what the world might be like in 2019. My story takes place in a scenario created by the Institute for the Future for their Superstruct forecasting …
Day 2: Settling In

By Elizabeth Merritt

This is the second installment of “My World 2019” a fictional diary I wrote in 2008 to explore the scenario created by the Institute for the Future for their Massive Multiplayer Online Forecasting game Superstruct. I’m …
My story, Part 1 (October 7, 2019)

By Elizabeth Merritt

When CFM launched in 2008, one of our first capers was recruiting museum people into Superstruct, the Institute for the Future’s Massive Multi-player Online Forecasting game. Over the course of three months, 7000 players transported …
Is the future of museums, museums from the future?

By Elizabeth Merritt

Readers of this blog know I collect exhibits that explore imaginary futures, especially when these explorations inspire people to take action today. In today’s post, Ludwig Bengtsson Sonesson, Project Leader and Communications Officer at …
Futurist Friday: An Anthology of Climate Fiction

By Elizabeth Merritt

Here’s an extra special treat for your Futurist Friday: “Everything Change: An Anthology of Climate Fiction” was just released as a free digital download by the Imagination and Climate Futures Initiative (ICF) at Arizona …