In the better half of the 21st century, in the middle of a glacier-carved lake in the hilly north edge of a certain green, mountainous state, there is an island village called Avalon. It exists after scarcity, with a peculiar continuity to its past as a lumber milling center and a summertime retreat for farther-flung wealth. Avalon is a portrait of a particular rural future, one in which the questions of life in the outer edges of a wealthy, deeply unequal society have been answered in unexpected ways.

The project of Avalon comes from a desire to see a future for the world we live in, one not mired in dystopias that warn us against our worst possible todays without pointing toward the better world that is indeed possible. It’s particularly pressed on by a desire to see a future that isn’t characterized by the bleeding edge of the technologically and culturally possible we see in most speculative fiction, one centered on the great cosmopolitan global cities or interplanetary frontiers, but one that can be envisioned in the small, aging towns, the remote and currently-shrinking places that have and likely will be receiving the future’s distribution second and third-hand.