As one of a series of reports in progress, this report is introduced with a discussion of the concepts underlying long-range planning of any kind, and the methods of research used to describe alternative patterns of evolution or change within various policy fields. The FAR method, which emerged out of the Contingent U.S. Patterns (CUSPs) analysis project, is an example. This method involves the projection of particular quasi-organic whole-body futures and sets of such futures that promise to describe or bracket the actual, unknowable course of things to come. It requires an alternation of attention between wholes and parts, between artistic apperception or the knowledge of details, and the logical analysis of interaction among the parts of wholes as in scientific modes of inquiry. In this way a sober effort has been made to keep the method of projecting commensurate with the decision making process relying chiefly on individual gestalt appreciations. The successive cycles of analysis, component steps of projection, and the sectors and sector/factors of a matrix are described. The sectors are revised and mapped leading toward a "values tree" to be compared or merged with a "constraints/opportunities tree" to form a model of the aspects of United States society for generating alternative future histories. The current FAR method can be effectively used for the projection of a wider variety of future contexts from worldwide scope down to any locality that may be treated as a whole, such as education, social problems, the concerns of planning urban transportation systems, business planning, or social science research generally within a sociogeographical field. (Author/VW)