Library of Possibilities

“The most potent time-traveling technology we have is also the oldest technology we have: storytelling. The shelves of every library in the world brim with time machines.” – Anthony Doerr §

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This is my latest experiential futures project: a series of books from the future, each inspired by the work and interests of a different NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist or engineer, made tangible, and smuggled on to public library shelves in Los Angeles for readers to discover.

It’s part of the newly opened exhibition Blended Worlds: Experiments in Interplanetary Imagination, assembled by a terrific, multi-talented JPL team led by David Delgado. (Regular readers here might recall encountering David’s outstanding work before.) In addition to serving as Curatorial Advisor over the past few years, I’m honoured to have had the chance to make my own unorthodox contribution to the show.

At a philosophical level, Library of Possibilities is an imaginary provocation: it’s the vast collection of all books that have not yet been published. Compare to Borges’ fantastic Library of Babel, which contains all possible books (even if most are nonsense, à la the proverbial typewriting-monkeys). At a more practical level, it’s a fraction of that mind-boggling catalogue; the dust jackets for six titles that might come out decades from now. A collection of hypothetical volumes.

Each one started with a deep-dive conversation with a JPL or NASA scientist or engineer about what they do, and imagining changes their work could help catalyse in generations to come. I also asked each interviewee to name a favourite work that has inspired them, to use as the underlying physical book, around which the book cover that they inspired is wrapped.

As a lifelong bibliophile I’ve had this idea of a series of future dust jackets in mind for years – but the stars finally aligned here, with NASA JPL, and the City of Glendale’s Library Arts and Culture department.

The first two future books have already appeared. When a reader finds one, they can take it up to the circulation desk to log their discovery officially. It then goes back into the collection for someone else to find.

With each new release, a copy is also added to the Blended Worlds exhibition at the Brand Library and Art Center, but for now, the only way to see all the details – front and back covers, blurbs, clips from press reviews of the imaginary works etc – is to track the physical books down at various Glendale Library branches.

I’ll share more when the project wraps up, including a full list of credits for the indispensable collaborators who helped make all this possible!

Meanwhile, to see announcements about each new book drop, follow Glendale LAC or me on social media.

If you’re able to get to the area, there’s already a future book somewhere in Glendale Central, and one in the Brand.

Blended Worlds: Experiments in Interplanetary Imagination runs through January 4th, 02025. It is part of the Getty Museum’s huge once-a-decade initiative PST ART, the theme for which this time is Art and Science Collide.

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§ Doerr is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of novels and short stories. This quote comes from his New York Times review of the book Time Travel: A History by science writer James Gleick.

Previously posted on LinkedIn. Blended Worlds image from NASA JPL. Photos by Stuart Candy, installation process photo by Ceda Verbakel.

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