What Future ─ The Year's Best Ideas to Reclaim, Reanimate & Reinvent Our Future

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 collects long-form journalism and essay writing that address a wide range of topics crucial to our future, from environmental and political, to human health and animal rights, to technology and the economy. What Future is committed to a variety of diverse perspectives; and will include new writing by and about the scientists, writers, journalists, and philosophers who are proposing the options that lay not just ahead, but beyond. The anthology features new writing by and about the scientists, writers, journalists, and philosophers who are proposing the options that lay not just ahead, but beyond us. From the post-fossil fuel economy to the mushroom death suit, how can humanity create new technologies while also processing what already exists. These visions of the future celebrate the boldest and most courageous voices that both challenge the current state of our planet and supply possibilities for how it might become something else.

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).