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Future Stories
Future Stories
Nov 20, 2024 1:43 AM

Author:David Christian

Future Stories

'David Christian's approach to understanding history can help all of us learn to prepare for the future' - Bill Gates

A user's guide to the future: from the algorithms in DNA to why time is like a cocktail glass, interstellar migrations, transhumanism, the fate of the galaxy, and the last black hole...

Every second of our lives - whether we're looking both ways before crossing the street, celebrating the birth of a baby, or moving to a new city - we must cope with an unknowable future by telling stories about what will happen next. Where is the future, the place where we set those stories? Can we trust our future stories? And what sort of futures do they show us?

David Christian, historian and bestselling author of Origin Story, is renowned for pioneering the emerging discipline of Big History, which surveys the whole of the past. But with Future Stories, he casts his sharp analytical eye forward, offering an introduction to the strange world of the future, and a guide to what we think we know about it at all scales, from the predictive mechanisms of single-celled organisms and tomato plants to the merging of colossal galaxies billions of years from now.

Drawing together science, history and philosophy from a huge range of places and times, Christian explores how we prepare for uncertain futures, including the future of human evolution, artificial intelligence, interstellar travel, and more. By linking the study of the past much more closely to the study of the future, we can begin to imagine what the world will look like in the next hundred years and consider solutions to the biggest challenges facing us all.

Reviews

David Christian's approach to understanding history can help all of us learn to prepare for the future that lies ahead and the big challenges facing humanity.

—— Bill Gates

In this erudite and immersive study, Big History Project cofounder Christian (Origin Story) examines the science and history of "future thinking" and sketches what the distant future might look like... Christian lucidly explains complex scientific, philosophical, and historical concepts. The result is a stimulating look ahead.

—— Publisher's Weekly

Future Stories is simultaneously entertaining and sobering, and is recommended reading for anyone who may be curious about what's ahead of us.

—— Shelf Awareness

A fascinating journey... reminiscent of Peter Godfrey-Smith's writings on the octopus... Future Stories is rich with insights... Most dangerous threats arise from technological and economic overreach... Future Stories not only shows how we have approached such choices through history - it helps us to understand the odds.

—— New Scientist

Brilliant

—— Adam Kay , author of This is Going to Hurt and Undoctored

Passionate, deeply researched and page-turningly full of good stories, this is so good one is tempted to say it is the book the NHS has always deserved

—— Andrew Marr

This is a sensational and much-needed book: funny, intelligent and so beautifully written that it doesn't read like normal non-fiction . . . thorough, scholarly and above all readable

—— Chris van Tulleken

A kaleidoscopic history of the NHS

—— Henry Marsh , New Statesman

Hardman's writing is breezily accessible, and her deeply researched book is full of colourful vignettes and an enjoyable spice of gossip . . . she is particularly good at locating the NHS within the wider social movements that have changed British life over the 75 years of its existence

—— Sarah Neville , Financial Times

A brilliantly written and engrossing biography of the NHS . . . compelling and even-handed

—— Kate Womersley , The Spectator

A superb, rollercoaster account of the NHS . . . This completely riveting and scrupulously researched book shows how, just like its patients, the NHS sways precariously between money, morality and mortality, and trust, trauma and triumph

—— Juliet Nicolson

A compelling thriller . . . Fighting for Life provides vivid and urgently needed context to the familiar daily news stories about the crises in the NHS

—— Steve Richards

A must-read for anyone interested in how the NHS started and why we have ended up where we are. A thoroughly fascinating, comprehensive and critical analysis

—— Dr Ranj Singh

A fascinating, insightful and forensic history of the NHS by a journalist who understands the politics as well as the policy of the health service. Essential reading

—— Rachel Sylvester

This remarkable and immensely readable book looks back at the highs and lows of the NHS's first 75 years, and asks critical questions about its future. Thought-provoking, despairing, eye-opening, and inspiring in equal measure

—— Sir David Haslam

Hardman provides an admirable account of the struggles of the [health service] . . . She is lucid, fair and unpolemical

—— Andrew Gimson , Conservative Home

Inspiring, passionate, a great read!

—— Sarah Woolnough, CEO Asthma and Lung UK

For those feeling disheartened by the scale of the environmental crisis - and the lack of meaningful action on behalf of most political leaders - Breathe is a refreshing and galvanising call to action.

—— Vogue

Quite the page-turner.

—— Evening Standard

An eye-opening insight into what it's like trying to fight for the planet from inside the decision-makers.

—— IFL Science

Brilliant

—— The Times

This complex portrait illuminates cells' roles in immunity, reproduction, sentience, cognition, repair and rejuvination, malfunctions such as cancer, and treatments such as blood transfusions, drawing on author Siddhartha Mukherjee's varied experience as an immunologist, stem-cell scientist, cancer biologist and medical oncologist

—— Nature

The book is, at root, a call for a more integrated biology ... What gives The Song of the Cell its persuasiveness in calling for that new vision is precisely that it comes from a clinician steeped in the traditions of genomic and cell biology, and who has seen both the power and limitations of those approaches to produce actual cures

—— Lancet

What truly elevates the book are Mukherjee's accounts of his experiences as a clinician and the stories of the patients he has encountered. Some are moving, and all are reflective and insightful

—— Philip Ball, Lancet

Remarkable... a delight, a book that prompts awe at the world around us

—— Sunday Times, *Summer Reads of 2022*

A tour of our own world as we may never experience it

—— Geography, *Book of the Month*

This book will reignite your sense of wonder and appreciation for our amazing planet

—— Woman's Own Magazine

Immaculately researched, elegantly written, iconoclastic and compulsively readable

—— The Times Literary Supplement

[Yong's] skills are on full display here, as he clearly and succinctly sketches out complex scientific and philosophical ideas in terms that are understandable for the lay reader

—— Prospect

Yong ... has a rare ability to break down overwhelming amounts of information into compelling, digestible detail. His An Immense World will make you question everything you thought you knew about how non-human animals perceive our shared world.

—— Heromag

One of President Barack Obama's 'favourite books of 2022'

—— President Barack Obama

Remarkable ... manages to be both a celebration of our species' genius for observation while also revealing how narrow and partial our 'sense' of things. Yong reveals how life is much greater than we can images.

—— New Statesman, *Books of the Year 2022*

Yong's colourful, character-filled writing reveals a multidimensional world that has hitherto remained hidden to us

—— Guardian, *Books of the Year*

This book welcomes us into previously unfathomable dimensions - the world as it is truly perceived by other animals

—— The Week Bookshop, *The best of 2022*

Ed Yong's book is a celebration of sights and sounds, smells and tastes, and the ways different animals exist on the planet we all share. Yong blends scientific study and elegant prose to transform textbook fodder into an excting read

—— Time Magazine

A brilliant story about life's most challenging puzzles: friendship, family, love, loss. By turns funny, poignant, wistful, and occasionally devastating

—— NATHAN HILL, author of THE NIX

The sort of book that comes around once in a decade - a magnificent feat of storytelling. It is a book about the intersection between love and friendship, work and vocation, and the impossible and relentless pull of our own west-bound destinies

—— REBECCA SERLE, author of In Five Years

Sam and Sadie's relationship is pure wizardry; it's deep and complex, transcending anything we might call a love story. Whether you care about video games or not is beside the point. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is the novel you've been waiting to read

—— Book Page, Chika Gujarathi

I feel completely changed by this book from Gabrielle Zevin. It's a book about love - about friendship, but really it transcends the borders of storytelling. My heart ached when I finished it. Truly unforgettable

—— CATHERINE CHO, author of Inferno

The perfect engrossing holiday read...beautiful and heartbreaking

—— The Times, *Summer Reads of 2023*

Zevin's delight in her characters, their qualities, and their projects sprinkles a layer of fairy dust over the whole enterprise. Sure to enchant even those who have never played a video game in their lives, with instant cult status for those who have.

—— Kirkus

A one-of-a-kind achievement

—— Publishers Weekly

A particularly memorable and compelling kind of love story... [a] nuanced depiction of human connection over 30 years that will have you blinking back tears behind your sunglasses

—— Culture Whisper, *Summer Reads of 2022*

dazzling and intricately imagined

—— B&N Reads

Zevin's writing is like being put under a spell. She's kind of magical.

—— Liberty Hardy , WBEZ

Sure to enchant even those who have never played a video game in their lives, with instant cult status for those who have.

—— Kirkus

exhilarating

—— Smithsonian

engrossing

—— Wall Street Journal

delightful and absorbing . . . expansive and entertaining

—— Tom Bissell , New York Times

The go-to for your next hit of Nineties nostalgia; if you ever spent too long playing Donkey Kong, this one's for you

—— Evening Standard, *Summer Reads of 2022*

This is a boy meets girl story that is never a romance - though it is romantic . . . Their relationship is a joining of minds and of worlds that is both purer and sweeter than any base physical attraction

—— Pippa Bailey , Observer

Big-hearted, generous, intelligent and open to the complexities of life

—— Irish Independent

A novel that treasures the act of play and holds it sacred . . . the world of video games and video game development is just the landscape in which life plays out . . . Tomorrow is about love, above all things

—— Sarah Maria Griffin , Guardian

Delightful and absorbing

—— Tom Bissell , International New York Times

Teenagers of the 21st century are as likely to bond over video games as they are rock music or movies. Gabrielle Zevin's exhilarating, timely and emotive book is perhaps the first novel to truly get to grips with what this means

—— Guardian

Exhilarating... this is refreshingly original

—— Psychologies

It is the imaginary world of a game, a world Zevin describes with the addict's ardour, which forms a universe even the sturdiest parent or antediluvian book-lover will be enticed into.

—— Big Issue

Friendship, love, loyalty, violence in America and the magic of invented worlds. Gorgeous

—— People

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a special book -- one that transports readers fully, as games do their players, into its immaculately crafted world

—— The Times

Woven throughout are meditations on originality, appropriation, the similarities between video games and other forms of art, the liberating possibilities of inhabiting a virtual world, and the ways in which platonic love can be deeper and more rewarding - especially in the context of a creative partnership - than romance.

—— New Yorker

Zevin probes at many of the themes that energize video games as a medium: their narrative depth, their therapeutic value, their casual violence, their toxic industry. And the possibility of living a better life in a virtual world

—— Wired

Zevin has the ability to make you care about her creations within paragraphs of meeting them... whose fates I consistently worried about when I occasionally had to put the book aside.

—— Financial Times

[An] engrossing, delightful novel... Zevin has the ability to make you care about her creations within paragraphs of meeting them... [Tomorrow] is rich with characters whose intertwined fates power the narrative

—— Financial Times

This book, with its respect for craft-the craft of love and games, or loving games-will remind you of how abundant one life is, how lucky we are to keep each other in our memories forever.

—— Kotaku

[I] raced through this pure wonder of a book in a few days

—— NINA MINGYA POWLES, author of Small Bodies of Water

A 2022 book that everyone should read

—— Pandora Sykes , Stylist LIVE

A must-read

—— Neil Druckmann

Anyone who reads Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow can't stop talking about it

—— Stylist

Utterly beautiful and endlessly hopeful, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a love letter to life, friendship, and creativity

—— The Skinny, *Books of 2022*

[The] 2022 book that everyone should read

—— Pandora Sykes , Stylist Live

My #1 book to recommend . . . incredible, like The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon meets The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer. It's about love and friendship and video games

—— Emma Straub

It feels right that the best video game novel out there is by a woman. Her story about the decades-long friendship and partnership between video game designers Sam and Sadie gets at so much about work, love and storytelling. It's a book that spawns great conversations.

—— Irenosen Okojie, author of Nudibranch

In following Sam and Sadie's journey from Massachusetts to California and into the imagined worlds of their games, Zevin writes the most precious kind of love story

—— Time Magazine, Best Novel of the Year

Zevin's writing is poetic, the plot is entertaining, moving and gripping and the nods to real life video games make it all feel incredibly real

—— Skinny, *Books of the Year*

Reading this is almost like an invitation from Zevin to enter a game...with every scene and moment so carefully constructed. Just brilliant

—— Skinny, *Books of the Year*

I loved it

—— Sarah Keyworth

A hugely enjoyable novel about lives and loves mediated by technology

—— Guardian, *Summer Reads of 2023*

This playful, accomplished novel is a poignant celebration of friendship, love - and gaming

—— Daily Mail

An engrossing coming-of-age story

—— Sunday Times, *Books of the Year*

Epic in scale, with unforgettable characters, it breaks you heart and puts it back together

—— Daily Express, *Books of the Year*
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