In 2016, speculative fiction writer William Gibson faced a unique dilemma. Gibson found that he was unable to finish his current book because it was set in a present that no longer existed. Perversely, the future had become now. Gibson almost put the book aside for good, thinking:

Gibson's sense of dread is one that many of us have shared over the last few years, a dread that has only intensified since 2016, of being blindsided by a dire turn of events and the speed with which a future dystopia seems to be approaching. Life now imitates (nightmarish) art; global pandemics, climate crises, widening social and racial inequalities, civil unrest, liberal democracy under threat, the contestation of truth, science, objective fact, these are our new ‘normals’. Gibson's book was set in both the present and a post-apocalyptic future – a time after the ‘Jackpot’, an unspecified cataclysmic confluence of events or ‘ecopolitical disasters’ that wiped out 80 per cent of the human population, resulted in mass extinctions of nonhuman animals, and left the biosphere on the brink of collapse. For Gibson, the evidence was in, his imagined apocalyptic future was his 2016 now.

Our book, The Lawful Forest, is framed for this time on the cusp, written on the precipice of Gibson's ‘Jackpot’. We may be living through the end-days of late-stage capitalism, when David Harvey's accumulation by dispossession nears its inexorable conclusion – and the final enclosure of our earthly commons looms. All around us the portents are ominous. Species extinction accelerates, one hottest summer on record is followed by another, mega-wildfires scorch the land, and so on. Meanwhile, the human institutions we rely on for collective action seem inadequate for the herculean task. Democracy is under stress, inequalities are further entrenched, truth is relative, even insurrection surreally stalks the corridors of the U.S. Capitol. However, these dire times also speak of other ways forward, of past societal moments when we were on different ‘edges’, and of their ‘shadow revolutions’ rich in promise, yet never fulfilled.