At the Frontiers of the Possible

“Art seems to not have a place in a post-human, data-dictated, exact world, because art is humans’ attempt to understand the human, what escapes us. But art is, arguably, intrinsically part of us and will always be: it will only be channelled differently, with a decreasing need for understanding humanity and probably also the individual, but with an increasing need to craft new realities that best suit the needs of the individual and that might immediately, or still handily, become livable and self-evident.”

In At the Frontiers of the Possible: How Literary Visions Shape the Real World, Roberto Lippi takes readers on an extraordinary journey across speculative fiction, philosophy of mind, and cultural theory to uncover how imagination in literature and the arts is not an end in itself, but something that actively builds the future. From William Gibson’s neon cyberpunk landscapes to Kazuo Ishiguro’s fragile robots, from Jeanette Winterson’s eco-dystopias to Ian McEwan’s alternate histories, this book shows how stories anticipate scientific discoveries, technological revolutions, and even shifts in collective consciousness.

Blending academic rigor with accessible language, Lippi interprets six speculative literary works while introducing innovative concepts such as Universal Cognition, a shared mental space encompassing all possible human experiences, and inverse mimesis, the idea that the technologies we create reveal hidden truths about ourselves. Among other topics, this work explores:

How speculative literature reveals hidden connections between science, technology, and human imagination.
The ways in which novels act as “white papers of the future”, predicting everything from cyberspace to artificial intelligence.
Why art and creativity remain essential in an age dominated by data, algorithms, and automation.
The deep relationship between neuroscience and narrative, where new mental connections mirror new cultural realities.

Whether you are a scholar, a reader passionate about science fiction and philosophy, or someone intrigued by the future of humanity, this book opens your mind to the intersections of imagination, knowledge, and possibility.

For readers fascinated by unknown unknowns, the role of technology in shaping society, and the enduring power of imagination, At the Frontiers of the Possible is both an intellectual adventure and a manifesto for the power of art to shape our shared future.