This volume is a record of the Santa Fe Institute’s second InterPlanetary Festival, nicknamed Stardust, held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in June of 2019. The InterPlanetary Festival fuses an exploration of complex systems and technological innovation with music, film, art, food, drinks, and more.

During the Summer of Stardust, as the world observed the fiftieth anniversary of the momentous Apollo 11 Moon landing, the Festival celebrated human ingenuity and pondered what the next half-century might hold. Conversations centered on building other worlds — imaginatively in literature, experimentally in simulation and games, and literally in architectural design. Attendees and panelists wrestled with topics as wide-ranging as time, the future of cities, and the meaning of intelligence.

In this book, transcripts of the Festival panel discussions, each paired with new introductions by contributors including physicist Sean Carroll, poet, artist, and curator Anaïs Duplan, and speculative-fiction writer Rebecca Roanhorse, commemorate the creativity and insight generated at this one-of-a-kind cosmic event.

This volume is a record of the proceedings of the first InterPlanetary Festival, held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in June of 2018 by the Santa Fe Institute, birthplace of complexity science.

An annual free public event, the InterPlanetary Festival combines an exploration of complexity science and technological innovation with a summer festival full of music, film, art, food, drinks, and more. 

The Festival is just one aspect of the broader InterPlanetary Project, which is equal parts conference, festival, and research program. The first project of its kind to combine celebration with experimentation, and conversation with analysis, the InterPlanetary Project seeks nothing less than a whole-planet project—beyond borders, beyond politics, beyond economics—to activate the collective intelligence of our first planet: Earth.