Futuristic Books

[strongbad]

Yo doods
I finished the first book in the Foundation series a few months back, and I really enjoyed Asimov's depiction of the future of humanity. Can you guys recommend any other books that do this well? Speculating about the future is like my favorite thing 

[piano moths]

all kurt vonnegut

[strongbad]

all kurt vonnegut

i totally read a third of slaughterhouse5 and then lost it
need to get back on that

[snoorkel]

yeah ol Kurt is good. like Cat's Cradle and Galapagos I think were/are my favorites that are futuristic.

but all you really need is Philip K Dick, read Ubik and do androids dream of electric sheep (aka blade runner but not really), and when you are ready to receive the gnosis, VALIS

also Thomas M Disch has a couple good shorter sci-fi novels, orson scott card is one author a lot of people recommend but I don't really like him. Vurt by Jeff Noon is a cool book about future drugs. J.G. Ballard has a short story collection of mostly sci fi (oddly) that has some pretty wacked out futuristic things. avoid william gibson and neal stephenson.

and, uhm, William S Burroughs.

[Boogus Epirus Aurelius]

yeah ol Kurt is good. like Cat's Cradle and Galapagos I think were/are my favorites that are futuristic.

but all you really need is Philip K Dick, read Ubik and do androids dream of electric sheep (aka blade runner but not really), and when you are ready to receive the gnosis, VALIS

also Thomas M Disch has a couple good shorter sci-fi novels, orson scott card is one author a lot of people recommend but I don't really like him. Vurt by Jeff Noon is a cool book about future drugs. J.G. Ballard has a short story collection of mostly sci fi (oddly) that has some pretty wacked out futuristic things. avoid william gibson and neal stephenson.

and, uhm, William S Burroughs.

Wooooooo, still sliding through the exegesis these days when I get a spare hour.

[silvertone]

you should read the Futurist COok Book,  huxley wrote a future book, but it was about the 60s in the thirties? i have to go he wrote 2 future books actually. Island and brave new world.

[Boogus Epirus Aurelius]

A few boyagers should write a collective future projection somewhere.

[snoorkel]

A few boyagers should write a collective future projection somewhere.

are we talking like decades, or really "projection," you know, in the astral sense.

[silvertone]

there is this cool essay called The Liberal Virus and it has a cool thing about how the future will be [more] literal genocide.

[snoorkel]

there is this cool essay called The Liberal Virus and it has a cool thing about how the future will be [more] literal genocide.

also kind of about this, HG Wells wrote probably his best book The Open Conspiracy

[Socks]

also kind of about this, HG Wells wrote probably his best book The Open Conspiracy

One of his best essays is Inside the Whale, as that episode in the Book of Jonah foretold.

[spaceman]

Check out Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon. It's about as large as scope of future projection as has ever been made.

"Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future is a "future history" science fiction novel written in 1930 by the British author Olaf Stapledon. A work of unprecedented scale in the genre, it describes the history of humanity from the present onwards across two billion years and eighteen distinct human species, of which our own is the first and most primitive. Stapledon's conception of history is based on the Hegelian Dialectic, following a repetitive cycle with many varied civilizations rising from and descending back into savagery over millions of years, but it is also one of progress, as the later civilizations rise to far greater heights than the first. The book anticipates the science of genetic engineering, and is an early example of the fictional supermind; a consciousness composed of many telepathically-linked individuals."

The chapters are split up telling the stories of the different species of men. "The First Men", "The Second Men", so on and so forth until "The Eighteenth Men" two billion years from now.

Check it out, it will satisfy any desire you have for reading books that tell futuristic projections of humanity.

[strongbad]

Check out Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon. It's about as large as scope of future projection as has ever been made.

"Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future is a "future history" science fiction novel written in 1930 by the British author Olaf Stapledon. A work of unprecedented scale in the genre, it describes the history of humanity from the present onwards across two billion years and eighteen distinct human species, of which our own is the first and most primitive. Stapledon's conception of history is based on the Hegelian Dialectic, following a repetitive cycle with many varied civilizations rising from and descending back into savagery over millions of years, but it is also one of progress, as the later civilizations rise to far greater heights than the first. The book anticipates the science of genetic engineering, and is an early example of the fictional supermind; a consciousness composed of many telepathically-linked individuals."

The chapters are split up telling the stories of the different species of men. "The First Men", "The Second Men", so on and so forth until "The Eighteenth Men" two billion years from now.

Check it out, it will satisfy any desire you have for reading books that tell futuristic projections of humanity.

that sounds fucking cool
i'm reading do androids dream of electric sheep right now but i will totally check that out after

[Mando Pandango]

Michio Kaku recently wrote a book about how science could actually shape the world in the coming century. That may be up your alley.

The Forever War isn't necessarily about the future but it has some interesting commentary about it, considering the main character lives through many different eras in (future) history due to time dilation.

[snoorkel]

Michio Kaku recently wrote a book about how science could actually shape the world in the coming century. That may be up your alley.

goddammit no fuck that book. he is cool scientist but his books fucking suck