Vaster than Empires: Speculative Fiction of the Eternal and the Ephemeral

Futures imagined by writers at the outer limits of science and storytelling—from the depths of time to the limits of life.

Vaster than Empires is a global anthology of original science fiction stories that explores the philosophical and scientific frontiers of life, intelligence, and temporality. Edited by Jonathan Strahan, this collection gathers award-winning authors to imagine what it means to be alive in futures shaped by synthetic biology, climate change, interstellar migration, and artificial intelligences. These speculative fictions expand the boundaries of both science and story, treating narrative as a tool for planetary thought.

The anthology is more than a literary project—it is a companion to an intellectual movement. From Afrofuturist visions of posthuman ecology to eerie meditations on immortality and loss, these stories are unified by an ambition to fuse rigorous speculation with emotional depth. The collection includes original contributions by globally recognized authors like Adrian Tchaikovsky, Wole Talabi, and Aliette de Bodard, alongside rising voices.

Commissioned by the Berggruen Institute through its Future Humans initiative

Contributors: Aliette de Bodard, Anya Johanna DeNiro, Greg Egan, Kate Elliott, Saad Z. Hossain, Paul McAuley, Sam J. Miller, Tochi Onyebuchi, Chen Qiufan (translated by Emily Jin), Karl Schroeder, Gu Shi (translated by Ken Liu), Wole Talabi, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Karin Tidbeck, and Caroline M. Yoachim.