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A Short History of the Future

1st edition
In the tradition of H. G. Wells’s The Shape of Things to Come, W. Warren Wagar’s A Short History of the Future is a memoir of postmodern times. Cast in the form of a history book, the narrative voice of the book’s powerful vision is that of 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 dazzling and imaginative combination of fiction and scholarship, Wagar’s speculative history of the future alternates between descriptions of world events and intimate glimpses of his fictive historian’s family through the ages.

Jensen’s tale traces the flow of the future from the early twenty-first-century reign of a megacorporate global economy, to its sudden collapse in 2044, when nuclear catastrophe envelops the world. In the traumatic aftermath, a socialist world commonwealth comes into being in the year 2062, followed by a lengthy transition to a decentralized order of technologically mature autonomous societies, many located in outer space. The riveting literary interludes that follow each chapter take the form of letters and documents from the history of Jensen’s family, evoking the everyday lives of people in the midst of these global-historical events. Here we meet a woman in Brazil whose son is dying from a new immuno-deficiency disease, two brothers comparing life on earth with life in a space colony, and many more.

Neither fiction nor nonfiction, Wagar’s brilliantly creative work is not meant to forecast the future, but rather to draw attention to possibilities and alternatives for humankind and planet Earth. In doing so, it also serves as an unforgettable reminder that the future is being made now.

339 pages | 6 x 9 | © 1989

Sociology: General Sociology

Table of Contents

Foreword by W. Warren Wagar
A Note to the Reader
Preface and Dedication
Book the First: Earth, Inc.
1. The Last Age of Capital
Interlude
2. Ruling Circles
Interlude
3. Fouling the Nest
Interlude
4. The Molecular Society
Interlude
5. The Catastrophe of 2044
Interlude
Book the Second: Red Earth
6. The Coming of the Commonwealth
Interlude
7. The Great Housecleaning
Interlude
8. We, the People
Interlude
9. Vested Interests
Interlude
Book the Third: The House of Earth
10. The Small Revolution
Interlude
11. The Autonomous Society
Interlude
12. Transhumanity
Envoi to Ingrid
A Last Note to the Reader
Afterword by Immanuel Wallerstein
Genealogy of the Jensens and Brandts
Chronology
Studies of the Future: Suggested Reading
Index

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