BOOK: A natural follow up to Origin Story, which sold 50k copies in UK & Commonwealth, Future Stories will appeal to fans of history and science alike. Sold in Germany, Sweden, Brazil, Japan, Korea, China, Thailand, Indonesia, Israel, Poland, Romania, EstoniaAUTHOR: A distinguished professor of history who has a proven track record of drawing together many different disciplines to look at the big picture, his writing has won praise from the likes of Bill Gates and Carlo Rovelli ('In Origin Story, David Christian has found a spectacular way to use history to put order in the entire set of our knowledge about the world. This is a wonderful achievement').COMPS: Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark (13k HB, 40k PB), The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver (8k HB, 49k PB), Superforecasting by Philip Tetlock (7k HB, 21k PB), On the Future by Martin Rees (6k HB), The End of Everything by Katie Mack (5k HB), Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari (33k HB, 444k PB)
David Christian is a Professor Emeritus at Macquarie University, where he was formerly a Distinguished Professor of History and the director of the Big History Institute. He has delivered keynotes at conferences around the world, including the Davos World Economic Forum, and his TED Talk has been viewed more than 19 million times. He is the author of numerous books including the
New York Times bestseller
Origin Story.
David Christian's approach to understanding history can help all of us learn to prepare for the future that lies ahead and the big challenges facing humanity.In this
erudite and immersive study, Big History Project cofounder Christian (
Origin Story) examines the science and history of "future thinking" and sketches
what the distant future might look like...
Christian lucidly explains complex scientific, philosophical, and historical concepts. The result is a stimulating look ahead.Future Stories is simultaneously entertaining and sobering, and is
recommended reading for anyone who may be curious about what's ahead of us.A fascinating journey... reminiscent of Peter Godfrey-Smith's writings on the octopus...
Future Stories is rich with insights... Most dangerous threats arise from technological and economic overreach...
Future Stories not only shows how we have approached such choices through history - it helps us to understand the odds.
'David Christian's approach to understanding history can help all of us learn to prepare for the future' - Bill Gates
A user's guide to the future: from the algorithms in DNA to why time is like a cocktail glass, interstellar migrations, transhumanism, the fate of the galaxy, and the last black hole...
Every second of our lives - whether we're looking both ways before crossing the street, celebrating the birth of a baby, or moving to a new city - we must cope with an unknowable future. How do we do this? And how do we, like most living organisms, manage this impossible challenge quite well (at least most of the time)?
David Christian, historian and bestselling author of Origin Story, is renowned for pioneering the emerging discipline of Big History, which surveys the whole of the past. But with Future Stories, he casts his sharp analytical eye forward, offering an introduction to the strange world of the future, and a guide to what we think we know about it at all scales, from the predictive mechanisms of single-celled organisms and tomato plants to the merging of colossal galaxies billions of years from now.
Drawing together science, history and philosophy from a huge range of places and times, Christian explores how we prepare for uncertain futures, including the future of human evolution, artificial intelligence, interstellar travel, and more. By linking the study of the past much more closely to the study of the future, we can begin to imagine what the world will look like in the next hundred years and consider solutions to the biggest challenges facing us all.
