http://cache.io9.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/io9.com.png http://io9.com/tag/near future http://io9.com/tag/near future One of the biggest challenges in concocting an optimistic near-future setting is just figuring out how we're going to solve the environmental and economic challenges we're facing. Peak oil. Climate change. And so on. So reading Australian professor Peter C. Doherty's optimistic history of the world, as of 2050, is like soaking your brain into a nice warm bath. It turns out we're going to use biopolymers and new, super-efficient solar power derived from copying the natural processes of ocean life to solve all our fossil fuel problems. And everybody's going to come together and agree to play nice. That's a relief. [The Conversation] More »
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It's 2013, and China's the only country to have survived an economic meltdown. The Chinese own Starbucks, which now serves longan dragon well lattes. So why can't anybody remember an entire month? That's the premise of a new dystopian novel. More »
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We loved Greg Pak's robot-themed anthology film Robot Stories, and now he's crafted a bizarre, clever short film set in our eco-apocalyptic near future. "Mister Green" is one of 11 movies about future America that you can watch for free. More »
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In Little Brother, Cory Doctorow showed how a grassroots, technology based movement could ensure our civil liberties. With his latest novel, Makers, he asks whether a similar movement could save American capitalism from itself. More »
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In Dash Shaw's Body World, a drug-addicted botanist travels to a small suburb to investigate the hallucinogenic qualities of a mysterious plant. When he smokes it, he finds himself getting closer to the town's inhabitants than he ever cared to. More »
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Alexander Irvine's recently-published Buyout takes a chilling look at the justice system and high finance, in a future right around the corner. It turns out crime does pay... but who cashes in? More »
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Now that Barack Obama has been elected president, reports are pouring in from the future to let us know what to expect from the next four to eight years. While some of these posts from the future depict Obama’s America as a big government, anti-Christian nightmare, others assure us that the new administration will usher in a post-racial, pro-technology utopia. Has the Obama election brought us a new brand of optimistic near-future science fiction? More »
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There's no question we're living in unpredictable times. With rapid advances in technology, ever-shifting governments and national borders, and unforeseen natural, political, and economic disasters, it is getting more and more difficult for people to make stable plans for the next few years. And, as novelist Charles Stross (Saturn's Children) points out, it's a challenge not only for those looking to plan their actual futures, but also for those attempting to plot out the future in fiction. More »
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William Gibson says reality has become science fictional, and therefore all his science fiction is now set in the present day. Authors like Charles Stross and Margaret Atwood have followed suit, writing books set in the near-future. What is this obsession with near-future SF? We asked io9's muse, science fiction author Ken MacLeod, whose latest book The Execution Channel is set in a not-too-distant future, and marks a strong departure from MacLeod's far-future space opera phase that included books like Learning the World, Newton's Wake, and the Engines of Light trilogy. MacLeod says he turned to the near-future out of fury with the present. Read our interview with him to find out more. More »
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