Preface and Acknowledgements -- 1 The Theory and Poetics of Future Narratives: A Narrative -- 1.1 Future Narratives: A New Kind of Narrative -- 1.2 What Narratives Do for You -- 1.3 Approaching the Future I: Great Shock - Utopian Tales No Future Narratives! -- 1.4 Approaching the Future II: The Unbearable Gravity of the Present -- 1.5 Capturing the Openness of the Moment: Some Basics About Nodes as Building Blocks of Future Narratives -- 1.6 Run Lola Run - Only a Pre-Cursor? -- 1.7 The Road Not Taken -- 1.8 Doing the Shuffle: Lola Runs Again, Books in Boxes, and Slatted Pages -- 1.9 Decision (Choice) Theory and Game Theory, in Relation to FNs -- 1.10 Into the Heart of the Matter: A Node's Interior Life - Character, Space, Time -- 1.11 Nodal Power -- 1.12 Varieties of Nodes -- 1.13 Interactivity -- 1.14 Simulation -- 1.15 As Node Leads on to Node: Nodal Structures and Their Representations -- 1.16 Why 'Narrative' Anyway? -- 1.17 Stranger than Fiction: The Failure of Prediction, the Virtue of Scenarios, and Why FNs Are the Key to Our Future -- 1.18 The Human Brain as an 'Anticipation Machine' -- 1.19 The Way Ahead -- 2 Formal Models for Future Narratives -- 2.1 Introduction -- 2.2 Representations of FNs -- 2.2.1 Nodal Graphs -- 2.2.2 Aspects -- 2.2.3 Consequences -- 2.2.4 Reaching the same Situation in two different Ways -- 2.3 Quantification of Openness -- 2.3.1 The Spectrum of Consequences -- 2.3.2 The Spectrum of the Agent -- 2.3.3 The Degree of Openness of a Situation: Nodal Power -- 2.4 Advanced Models for Similarities -- 2.4.1 Similarity -- 2.4.2 Formal Definition for Models of Type II -- 2.4.3 Models of Type II without underlying Subtractive Aspects -- 2.4.4 Path Dependency of External Aspects -- 2.4.5 Computing Nodal Power in the Presence of External Aspects -- 2.5 Reversibility -- 2.5.1 Undoing Choices.

2.5.2 Degree of Reversibility -- 2.6 Topological Classification of Future Narratives -- 2.6.1 The Topology of the Nodal Graph -- 2.6.2 Geometrical Classification: Homology Groups -- 2.6.3 Classification including Aspects: Cohomology Groups -- 2.6.4 Conclusion -- 2.7 Appendix: Basic Mathematical Concepts -- 2.7.1 Sets and Functions -- 2.7.2 Basic Graph Theory -- 2.7.3 Integration -- 3 Future Narratives: The Media-Historical Moment -- 3.1 The Historicity of 'Future' -- 3.2 The Probability Calculus -- 3.3 Insurances -- 3.4 Projects and the Stock Market: Great Expectations -- 3.5 The Coffeehouse and the Idea of Truth-as-Process -- 3.6 The Plot Thickens: The Modern Realist Novel -- 3.7 Future Narratives and Historical Mediality -- Works Cited.