What Future - by Torie Bosch & Roy Scranton (Paperback)

About the Book

"A yearly anthology collecting the most compelling, most deeply thought essays and articles about the future of life on our planet"--Back cover.

Book Synopsis

One of The Smithsonian Magazine's Best Science Books of the Year
The future is here and, frankly, it sucks. Without doubt, our culture is at a crossroads. Political strife and economic crises are byproducts of a larger looming challenge, one in which we will have to ask ourselves what constitutes a meaningful life. We must do the hard work of imagining a different kind of reality for ourselves. It's work that anticipates the worst but sees hope on the other side of catastrophe, or at least possibility; that presumes disaster and says, now what? A best-of-the-year anthology, What Future is a collection of long-form journalism and essays published in 2016 that address a wide range of topics crucial to our future, from the environmental and political, to human health and animal rights, to technology and the economy. What Future includes writing from authors Elizabeth Kolbert, Jeff Vandermeer, Bill McKibben, Kim Stanley Robinson, as well as the scientists, journalists, and philosophers who are proposing the options that lay not just ahead, but beyond, in prestigious magazines and journals such as The Atlantic and The New Yorker.

Review Quotes

"A sober, no-holds-barred view of the world that lies ahead... provocative and studded with insights." --Kirkus Reviews

"A vital collection of forward-looking writing...The overall tone is worried but optimistic. Don't look for utopian fantasies here--look for topical, intelligent projections of a realistically better future." --Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Torie Bosch is the editor of Future Tense, a project of Slate, New America, and Arizona State that looks at the implications of new technologies. Roy Scranton is the author of the novel War Porn (Soho Press, 2016) and the philosophical essay Learning to Die in the Anthropocene (City Lights, 2015). He is also one of the editors of Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War (Da Capo, 2013).