As befits a meeting ground for scientists and science fiction writers, the new Center for Science and the Imagination grew out of happenstance: a chance meeting last year between the novelist Neal Stephenson and Arizona State University’s president, Michael M. Crow.

Onstage at a technology conference in Washington, Mr. Stephenson was bemoaning the rash of dystopian visions of the future being generated by science fiction writers. (Mr. Stephenson, of course, was a founding author of the dark sci-fi genre known as cyberpunk.)

He also complained that the ambitious science and technology endeavors of the 1960s had become a thing of the past, and argued that American society had lost the vision to make great leaps into the future.

Afterward, Dr. Crow pushed back, saying the fault lay at least in part with the makers and fans of science fiction — for not thinking more ambitiously and optimistically about the future.