Short History of the Future
- Book Review,
by W. Warren Wagar
From Publishers Weekly
An imaginary history of the world from 1995 to 2200, this futurist tract can be read as science fiction or as an analytical extrapolation from current political-social trends. With magisterial sweep, it predicts the collapse of the global capitalist system (including the state capitalisms of the Soviet Union and China), the death of six billion people in World War III, mass starvation, the founding of a socialist-democratic world government. Then, around 2140, the Smalls, with their philosophy of eco-mysticism, usher in a decentralized, human-scale socioeconomic order. Wager, a historian at the State University of New York, loads the deck by including almost every conceivable scenario--solar power, colonies in space and on Mars, Arab-Israeli war, the disintegration of marriage and the family, genetic engineering, and so forth. His bold chronicle is thought-provoking, disturbing and immensely worthwhile. Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This future world history is presented as the reminiscences of a 115-year old historian, supposedly transcribed from a "holofilm" bequeathed to his granddaughter in the year 2200. Wagar is not a science fiction writer, although he uses the genre's methods. In a highly readable style he projects plausible societal futures based upon current trends. He outlines the fall of world capitalism in book one and forecasts shortages of natural resources and a nuclear catastrophe. In book two he describes the establishment of a socialist world government, and in book three tells how a decentralized utopian world community comes about. Since Arthur C. Clarke's July 20, 2019 ( LJ 1/87) and other books have focused more on technological changes in the immediate future, Wagar's sociological speculations constitute an important addition to the field of future studies. Recommended for most libraries.- Gary D. Barber, SUNY at Fredonia Lib.Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Book News, Inc.
Wagar (history, SUNY Binghamton) combines fiction and scholarship to present a scenario of 1995-2100. The second edition is updated to incorporate worldwide political events that occurred just after the book was first published in 1989. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.
Book Description
W. Warren Wagar's A Short History of the Future is a memoir of postmodern times, cast as a history. This powerful and visionary book is narrated by a far-future historian, Peter Jensen, who leaves this account of the world from the 1990s to the opening of the twenty-third century as a gift to his granddaughter. A combination of fiction and scholarship, this third edition of Wagar's speculative history of the future alternates between descriptions of world events and intimate glimpses of his fictive historian's family into the first centuries of the new millennium.
"Thanks to Wagar's magisterial command of futurist information and theory, his extrapolated near-term future is an incisive, dynamic vision of where we may indeed be heading."--H. Bruce Franklin, Washington Post
"A comprehensive, massively detailed script of a possible near future. . . . Intriguing."--San Francisco Chronicle
"A Short History of the Future reads with ease, raises provocative possibilities and presents challenging occasions for thought and argument."--Chicago Tribune
"A breathtaking future history in the manner of Wells and Stapledon, unnerving in its mixture of fact, fiction, and personal perspectives."--George Zebrowski, New York Review of Science Fiction
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