Creative Futures
Inspirational and thought-provoking collection of short stories imagining future crises and solutions, uniting the spheres of creative storytelling and real-life resilience building.
We’re going to change the world.
Science Fiction writers spend their lives thinking about what will happen in the future. In this anthology, a select group bring imaginative thinking to the challenges the world will face in the next century.
This anthology is a collection of works that draw inspiration from the Creative Futures Research Project, a partnership between Coventry University and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), the UK Ministry of Defence’s science and technology organisation. The writers involved in the project created stories that imagined some of the future crises that we may have to resolve and the ramifications of our choices on the generations who come after us.
Edited by author, lecturer and researcher Allen Stroud, who had a leading role in the research project, this anthology not only entertains and inspires, but also reminds us of the immense value of the imagination and creativity of science fiction writers in helping us plan for future crisis management and resilience.
The full list of featured authors in this book is: Allen Stroud, Gavin Smith, Kieran Currie Rones, Stewart Hotston, Emma Newman, Stephen Oram, Tiffani Angus, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Adeola Eze, Gareth L. Powell, Stark Holborn, and Sophia McDougall.
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Allen Stroud
Dr. Allen Stroud is a researcher at Coventry University, working in Defence and Security Futures. He was Chair of the British Science Fiction Association between 2019 and 2025. and was editor of the British Fantasy Society Journal from 2015 to 2019. He is an award-winning writer and writes critical works, short stories, novels and music. His Fractal series, a collection of science fiction novels and shorter ‘episodes’ are published by Flame Tree Press. His Historical Dictionary of Fantasy Literature (2023) and Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction Literature (2026) are published by Bloomsbury.
Beyond and Within
The Flame Tree Beyond and Within short story collections bring together tales of myth and imagination by modern and contemporary writers, carefully selected by anthologists, and sometimes featuring short stories from a single author. Overall, the series presents a wide range of diverse and inclusive voices with myth, folkloric-inflected short fiction, and an emphasis on the supernatural, science fiction, the mysterious and the speculative. The books themselves are gorgeous, with foiled covers, printed edges and published only in hardcover editions, offering a lifetime of reading pleasure.
Beyond and Within consists of 7 total books and series is set to expand with the upcoming release of four more books. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.

