Category Archives: Future

PROMPT: Challenge

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What is the biggest challenge you will face in the next six months?

I couldn’t possibly say. I make no claims to clairvoyance. Life happens. Sometimes the complicated things go smoothly and the simple things frustrate.

BOOKS: A Few Rules for Predicting the Future by Octavia Butler

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A Few Rules for Predicting the Future: An EssayA Few Rules for Predicting the Future: An Essay by Octavia E. Butler
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Amazon.in Page

Release Date: April 16, 2024

This brief essay by one of science fiction’s greats, Octavia Butler, discusses her thoughts about forecasting the future and why it’s worth doing even though it’s so difficult (at some level of precision– even impossible.) Butler tells a few stories about questions from fans, being prescribed medication, and growing up during the space race and Cold War, stories that cleverly present her thoughts on the challenging art of anticipating the future.

It should be pointed out that this is a very short work. Even the sixty-ish page count is deceptive as that is accomplished with lots of white space, with large fonts, and even with colorful blank pages (and / or artwork.) If you’re paying full book price for it, be forewarned that, as clever and quotable as it is, it’s essentially magazine article length (and not a long article at that.)

If you can get your hands on this essay for a price commensurate with its word count, I’d highly recommend reading it.

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PROMPT: Three Years

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What will your life be like in three years?

Who can say? I could be dead. I could be one of the last humans alive after the next pandemic or a nuclear Holocaust or a solar flare that sends humanity back to the Stone Age, or some combination of these and / or other disasters. I could be sitting where I currently sit, doing what I’m currently doing.

I’m no fortune-teller. (If there’s one thing my time as a social scientist taught me, it’s that people think they are much better at making predictions than they are.)