Who broke the future? That’s not a rhetorical question. It’s the question I want us to sit with. Because many of us grew up on visions of tomorrow that felt expansive, hopeful, and full of possibility. Futures shaped by stories like Star Trek and Doctor Who, where curiosity mattered more than fear, and difference was something to explore rather than suppress.
Those stories taught us that the future could be better. More just. More inclusive. More human. And yet, somewhere along the way, that promise started to feel incomplete. Or distant. Or broken.
July 15, 2026—7:00pm to 8:30pm
Overview
In this talk, Cisco will begin with that fracture—that broken future. Through storytelling, personal experience, and speculative worldbuilding, he explores how the futures we were taught to imagine often left many of us out, or included us in ways that never quite felt real. As an Afrofuturist writer, they approach that absence not as a limitation, but as an invitation to build something more honest. Futures where diversity is not a feature, but a foundation. Where care is not assumed, but practiced. Where complexity is met with curiosity instead of control.
This is not a talk about perfect futures. It is about necessary ones. It is about the work of imagining worlds where we are not simply surviving systems that were not built for us, but actively reshaping them.
The session moves through narrative, reflection, and cultural analysis, and then opens into conversation. Together, we will ask what it means to repair a future that feels fractured. What we carry forward, what we leave behind, and what we are willing to build differently.
Because the future did not just break on its own. And if it can be broken, it can be rebuilt.
This talk will move between personal storytelling, reading excerpts and speculative worldbuilding, and cultural reflection. Cisco will share how his own work wrestles with questions of power, memory, and responsibility, and how fandom itself can be both a refuge and a battleground for imagining who gets to exist in the future. After the presentation, he will invite participants to engage directly, because it's not just a talk. It’s a conversation.
About the Presenter
T. Aaron Cisco (he/she/they) is an Amazon-bestselling author of speculative fiction whose work blends science fiction, horror, and social allegory with character-driven storytelling. He is the author of over two dozen published novels, novellas, OpEds, essays, and articles including the Land of Bone trilogy (The Unbanished, The Unrested, The Unbodied), Black Nerd Blue Box: The Wibbly Wobbly Memoirs of a Lonely Whovian, Steal the F**king Moon and, most recently, The Hex Worker Diaries.
Cisco's writing frequently explores systems of power, exploitation, and survival in near-future and speculative settings. Beyond his own works, Cisco was a contributing writer to OUTSIDE IN REGENERATES: 163 New New Perspectives on 163 Classic DOCTOR WHO Stories from ATB Publishing, received the MN Society of Professional Journalists Page One Award, recognition as one of the Ten Black Change-Makers Influencing the Twin Cities Arts Scene, and has been featured on Hennepin County Libraries’ prestigious Minnesota Black Authors list.
An unapologetic, lifelong nerd, At the heart of everything Cisco does is an unrelenting commitment to “squee,” the pure joy and excitement that comes from sharing stories, celebrating imagination, and connecting with others through the power of creativity.