I was looking for some near-future sci fi recommendations, particularly anything with a compelling prediction of what the next 10-20 years will look like.
Not a book, but I like to look at very niche reddit communities and imagine if their tech was adopted by the entire market. For example, years ago video game streamers were a thing, but a small niche was streaming "irl" - just walking down the street/etc. Now this is a huge section on twitch.
A current example is vtubers (and hololive). Its just youtubers/streamers, but their using very sophisticated live motion capture, so instead of a video of a person you're watching a 3d real-time animated person. Body capture, face capture, advanced 3d modeling, etc. Take this niche and imagine it exists in the mainstream - does every person have a digital version of themselves? etc.
Futurists prefer "forecasting" rather than "prediction" since the future is constructed from the past (that is, data) and not from the examination of pigeon entrails, tea leaves, or flakey models with deus ex machina solutions.
David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming would be a good choice. It's a snapshot of forecast reality, not near-future sci fi, and scary.
Also worthwhile, David Pogue's How to Prepare for Climate Change: A Practical Guide to Surviving the Chaos. Similar to the Wallace-Wells book, but from a different perspective.
Cormack McCarthy's The Road is a disturbing, post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son's fight to survive when life on earth dies off from the bottom up. It is set a bit further in the future than the others, at a point where the die off of humans is happening. Collapse and death is mostly low tech.
It does seem like we are living in a utopian sci fi novel these days (pandemic aside). We have ignored the warnings of pending collapse until there is no longer time to correct course or even adapt. So it's likely we wail be living in environmental chaos for the next 20 years and then slip into extinction over the next 10 as we experience first hand the last great die-off.
Huxley's Brave New World is sure to be more telling of how things will actually play out.
We won't give up our liberties if they are taken by force, but rather give them up out of apathy. Apathy as a result of the cessation of our easy desires.
There are many parallels between trends we all see coming in the 20s and themes of Huxley's '32 work.
[+] [-] soared|5 years ago|reply
A current example is vtubers (and hololive). Its just youtubers/streamers, but their using very sophisticated live motion capture, so instead of a video of a person you're watching a 3d real-time animated person. Body capture, face capture, advanced 3d modeling, etc. Take this niche and imagine it exists in the mainstream - does every person have a digital version of themselves? etc.
[+] [-] drallison|5 years ago|reply
David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming would be a good choice. It's a snapshot of forecast reality, not near-future sci fi, and scary.
https://smile.amazon.com/Uninhabitable-Earth-Life-After-Warm...
Also worthwhile, David Pogue's How to Prepare for Climate Change: A Practical Guide to Surviving the Chaos. Similar to the Wallace-Wells book, but from a different perspective.
https://smile.amazon.com/How-Prepare-Climate-Change-Practica...
Cormack McCarthy's The Road is a disturbing, post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son's fight to survive when life on earth dies off from the bottom up. It is set a bit further in the future than the others, at a point where the die off of humans is happening. Collapse and death is mostly low tech.
https://smile.amazon.com/Road-Cormac-McCarthy/dp/0307387895/...
It does seem like we are living in a utopian sci fi novel these days (pandemic aside). We have ignored the warnings of pending collapse until there is no longer time to correct course or even adapt. So it's likely we wail be living in environmental chaos for the next 20 years and then slip into extinction over the next 10 as we experience first hand the last great die-off.
[+] [-] kevrc|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] newman8r|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] URfejk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ynishiy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aalhour|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamesk14022|5 years ago|reply
We won't give up our liberties if they are taken by force, but rather give them up out of apathy. Apathy as a result of the cessation of our easy desires.
There are many parallels between trends we all see coming in the 20s and themes of Huxley's '32 work.
[+] [-] ceilingcorner|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aigoochamna|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tubularhells|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshxyz|5 years ago|reply