A Short History of the FutureW. Warren Wagar's A Short History of the Future is a memoir of postmodern times, cast as a history. This powerful and visionary book is narrated by a far-future historian, Peter Jensen, who leaves this account of the world from the 1990s to the opening of the twenty-third century as a gift to his granddaughter. A combination of fiction and scholarship, this third edition of Wagar's speculative history of the future alternates between descriptions of world events and intimate glimpses of his fictive historian's family into the first centuries of the new millennium. "Thanks to Wagar's magisterial command of futurist information and theory, his extrapolated near-term future is an incisive, dynamic vision of where we may indeed be heading."—H. Bruce Franklin, Washington Post "A comprehensive, massively detailed script of a possible near future. . . . Intriguing."—San Francisco Chronicle "A Short History of the Future reads with ease, raises provocative possibilities and presents challenging occasions for thought and argument."—Chicago Tribune "A breathtaking future history in the manner of Wells and Stapledon, unnerving in its mixture of fact, fiction, and personal perspectives."—George Zebrowski, New York Review of Science Fiction |
From inside the book
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Page iv
... Twenty - first century - Forecasts . 2. Twentieth century - Forecasts . 3. Imaginary histories . I. Title . CB161.W24 1999 303.49'09'05 - dc21 99-26530 CIP ISBN 0-226-86903-2 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum ...
... Twenty - first century - Forecasts . 2. Twentieth century - Forecasts . 3. Imaginary histories . I. Title . CB161.W24 1999 303.49'09'05 - dc21 99-26530 CIP ISBN 0-226-86903-2 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum ...
Page xiv
... twenty - first , but no scholar has the power to reconstruct even a small fragment of that lost time . All our ... century , we need not be embarrassed or inhibited by our inability to know the future . Some of the raw evidence that later ...
... twenty - first , but no scholar has the power to reconstruct even a small fragment of that lost time . All our ... century , we need not be embarrassed or inhibited by our inability to know the future . Some of the raw evidence that later ...
Page xv
... twenty - first century will reveal itself to our distant descendants not as a synchronic hodgepodge of alternatives but as a chronology , a line of development , an ongoing and ever - changing temporal context in which only certain ...
... twenty - first century will reveal itself to our distant descendants not as a synchronic hodgepodge of alternatives but as a chronology , a line of development , an ongoing and ever - changing temporal context in which only certain ...
Page 3
... twenty - first century and before , it is a book only of words . The chapter titles and subheads were inserted by Peter himself with a holoplastic laser pen . I hope that reading his book will take you back in feeling as well as thought ...
... twenty - first century and before , it is a book only of words . The chapter titles and subheads were inserted by Peter himself with a holoplastic laser pen . I hope that reading his book will take you back in feeling as well as thought ...
Page 12
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Contents
The Last Age of Capital | 9 |
Interlude | 22 |
Ruling Circle | 28 |
Interlude | 44 |
Fouling West | 52 |
Interlude | 69 |
The Molecular Society | 80 |
Interlude | 96 |
Vested Interests | 204 |
Interlude | 221 |
THE HOUSE OF EARTH | 231 |
The Small Revolution | 233 |
Interlude | 245 |
The Autonomous Society | 253 |
Interlude | 267 |
Transhumanity | 274 |
The Catastrophe of 2044 | 104 |
Interlude | 121 |
RED EARTH | 127 |
The Coming of the Commonwealth | 129 |
Interlude | 151 |
The Great Housecleaning | 155 |
Interlude | 170 |
We the People | 180 |
Interlude | 197 |
Envoi to Ingrid | 291 |
A Last Note to the Reader | 293 |
Afterword | 295 |
Genealogy of the Jensens | 298 |
Chronology | 299 |
307 | |
313 | |
317 | |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
age of capital American asteroid belt bioengineered biomap biosphere capitalist Carl Jensen Catastrophe Chávez China citizens civilization colony Commonwealth communities corporate countries Cubatão culture decades departments disease District of Table early ecomystics energy engineers force fossil fuels Free Trade party future Genetic Initiative global half Hightown historian Hollings-Gray Homo sapiens House of Earth human humankind Immanuel Wallerstein income INTERLUDE Jensen Knud labor last age late less live lords of capital Mars megacorporate megacorps ment million ministry Mogens molecular Moontown mundialized Muslim nations never nuclear weapons People's Congress percent planet political poor population problem production Revolution robots scientists Small party Smith-Carlsen social socialist society solar Soviet Union space Sun Ring Table Bay things thousand tion took Tribunate twentieth century twenty-first century United utopia wealth women world economy world order World party world system Yoon
Popular passages
Page vi - HG Wells, The Shape of Things to Come New York: Macmillan 1933,