Karen O'Brien

Ann El Khoury

Nicole Schafenacker

We live our lives through stories. They shape how we see the world, how we relate to it, and not the least, how we engage with it. Now more than ever, we need compelling stories that inspire both individual and collective action. The nine short stories presented in Our Entangled Future are rooted in the complex reality of the climate crisis. Rather than painting a dystopic future, they present agency-driven characters whose insights will inspire readers to contemplate and realize the potential for quantum social change. Our Entangled Future: Stories to Empower Quantum Social Change is part of the AdaptationCONNECTS research project, which is funded by the University of Oslo and the Research Council of Norway. AdaptationCONNECTS focuses on the relationship between adaptation and transformations to sustainability and explores the contributions of creativity, collaboration, empowerment, and new narratives. It also investigates the potential for new paradigms or thought patterns to shape the future, including those based on ideas drawn from quantum social science. The research engages with a growing recognition that to adapt successfully to climate change, we need to adapt to the very idea that we are creating the future right now. Adaptation is about transformation at the deepest levels, and there is no better way to transform than by telling new stories about ourselves and our significance in an entangled future. Could the use of new metaphors and images really contribute to a different narrative about climate change? We announced a call for short stories related to the notion of "quantum social change," fully recognizing the ambiguity of the term. We wanted stories to explore a quantum paradigm and were curious about the different ways that this would be interpreted. We deliberately pitched the call to both writers and researchers, in recognition that many of those who work daily with climate change are engaging with wider and deeper solution spaces. We sought stories that engage with creative agility to reimagine the world from the perspective of a new paradigm. Each story is paired with an original image of visual art, that relates to entanglement and the natural environment. The nine short stories featured in Our Entangled Future present a revitalizing view of our world and the context in which we find ourselves. Together, these stories help to convey our deepest values as humans and our greatest potential to respond collectively to climate change.

Nicole Schafenacker

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