Book compilation sites and individual titles that are helpful for strategic foresight and futures research.


Books - Compilation Sites (Free and For Pay)
Amazon.com
Largest collection of for-pay books online.
ASF's Top 50 and Top 500 Books on Accelerating Change
Recommended titles for your Futurist Bookshelf.
ASF's Top 150 Books for Foresight Development
Recommended titles from ASF's university course on foresight development.


Books - Individual Titles (Free)
(None listed yet. Add your finds here!)


Books - Individual Titles (For Pay)
In Top, STEEPS3 Nonfiction, and Fiction Categories
STEEPS3 is a futures categorization system that stands for:
Science, Evolution, and Development
Technology and Information
Environment, Energy, Resources, and Global
Economics, Globalization, and Capitalism
Politics, Security, and Democ
Society 1 (Big Society): Culture, Media, Education and Religion
Society 2 (Medium Society): Business and Organizations
Society 3 (Small Society): Personal & Careers
Please place books in alpha order under each category. Feel free to include your initials ( - JS, etc.) after any commentary that is your subjective opinion. Please provide at least one line of commentary per book and no more than six lines per book. Thanks!

Top Nonfiction Futures Books
CIA World Factbook 2008, Central Intelligence Agency, 2007
Great source of country information. Also available online for free.
Science and Human Values, Jacob Bronowski, 1990
Science today is largely silent on human values, a subject it remains a long way from understanding. Religion, tradition, and ideology powerfully fill this void today, speaking to issues of great value and importance to each of us. Yet science is a profoundly humanizing enterprise, and has been central to the elevation of human culture. Bronowski helps us understand both left-brained logic and right-brained creativity, both subjective introspection and objective science as complementary habits of truth.
50 Facts That Should Change the World, Jessica Williams, 2004
Perhaps 35 of these 50 stats are offensive or angering to varying degrees. The stats and their associated commentary make you motivated to change them. The other third (things like plastic surgery rates) are offensive or not depending in your values and political persuasion. Many of these problems will very likely be greatly improved in coming decades. Thanks to Disinformation.com for this cool book!
State of the Future 2006, State of the Future / "Millennium" Project (an Annual)
An annual book that analyzes and evaluates possible global prospects for humanity. It would likely be useful students wishing to find more sources for an essay or paper as well as for students who wish to learn more about future global scenarios, sciences and environmental scenarios.


Science, Evolution, and Development Books
A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking, 1988
This popular science book explains a wide range of topics in cosmology and modern physics. Although it is mainly a book about the "present", it also discusses the future of the field of physics and how it might affect humanity as a whole.
Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos, Roger Lewin, 2000
Global Brain: Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, Howard Bloom, 2001
Quantum: A Guide for the Perplexed, Jim Al-Khalili, 2004
Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain and How it Changed the World, Carl Zimmer, 2005
How the theory of mind has slowly progressed from immaterial, residing in the heart, to material, residing in the embodied nervous system. A fantastic story, ranging from Aristotle to the present day. It centers around the work of 17th century anatomist and early scientist Thomas Willis.
The Elegant Universe: Superstrings and Hidden Dimensions, Brian Greene, 2000
The Holographic Universe, Michael Talbot, 1991
What if all the separate images we see virtually every moment of our waking lives were actually part of the same whole? What if every mind was connected and inseparable from every other mind? And what if the universe were a projection of our consciousness? Michael Talbot argues for the idea that what we see in our limited three-dimensional view is actually a hologram created by interactions occurring in a broader set of dimensions (in the multiverse). This book bridges the worlds of science and metaphysics and offers at least a plausible hypothesis for their reconciliation.
The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century, David Salsburg, 2002
Great intro to the way statistics and probability math and models have led to great leaps in the search for scientific truth over the last hundred years. These mathematical methods are nothing less than humanities first great successful effort at building a "prediction science." Discovering and verifying probability distributions in complex systems is an excellent way to discover hidden order in the universe. The actuarial industry is just one of many that have been able to use these tools, approximate as they are, to very effectively manage the future in our partially chaotic world.


Technology and Information Books
Human Genetic Engineering: A Guide for Progressives, Pete Shanks, 2005
A nice intro to the many limits of biotech, and the social values that limit its adoption as well.
Massive Change and the Institute without Boundaries, Bruce Mau, 2004
Somewhat utopian but inspiring and very nicely illustrated manifesto on how better design can fundamentally improve our world.
Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind, Hans Moravec, 1998
The Future of Technology, Tom Standage, Ed., 2005
Insightful but circumscribed survey of the 10-year future of consumer, info, nano, and biotech, from an insightful editor at The Economist.
The Spike: Impact of Rapidly Advancing Technologies, Damien Broderick, 2002
Visions of Technology: A Century of Debate about Machines, Richard Rhodes, 2000
What Will Be: How Information Will Change Our Lives, Michael Dertouzos, 1997
Why Things Bite Back: Unintended Consequences of Tech, Edward Tenner, 1997
How technology trades big life-threatening problems with slower-acting, more complex ones.


Environment, Energy, Resources, and Global Books
An Inconvenient Truth: The Crisis of Global Warming, Al Gore, 2006
Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming, Bjorn Lomborg, 2007
Global Warming: A Very Short Introduction, Mark Maslin, 2004
Quick intro to the complexities of global warming forecasts, and the political positions involved.
Limits To Growth, Meadows, Meadows and Randers, 1979
Limits to Growth: The 30 Year Update, Meadows and Randers, 2004
Silent Spring (Special Edition), Rachel Carson, 1974/2002
The 2030 Spike: Countdown to Global Catastrophe, Colin Mason, 2003
The Bottomless Well: Why We Will Never Run out of Energy, Huber and Mills, 2006
The Long Emergency: Surviving the Catastrophes of the 21st Century, James Kunstler, 2006


Economics, Globalization, and Capitalism Books
Bobos in Paradise: The Upper Class and How they Got There, David Brooks, 2001
Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons, Peter Barnes, 2006
Development as Freedom, Amartya Sen, 2000
Globalization and its Discontents, Joseph Stiglitz, 2003
Miniatlas of Global Development, World Bank, 2004
Very small handbook of goals and progress in global development per the World Bank.
The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy, Yergin and Stanislaw, 1999
Epic account of the 20th century battle between governmental control and the free marketplace.
The Long Boom: A Vision for the Coming Age of Prosperity, Peter Schwartz, 2001
A leading futurist gives his rationale for why it's reasonable to expect unrivaled economic expansion all over the planet over the next 20 years. This scenario seems reasonable for New Asia, but is quite optimistic for the US given trends in recent decades.
The Future of Money, Benjamin Cohen, 2006
This book chronicles the steadily decreasing number of global currencies. Like languages, weaker national currencies have been progressively disappearing or "dollarizing" them (pegging their currency to a stronger global currency in fixed ratios). Cohen (of the Cato Institute) proposes that this currency contraction trend may soon reverse. I disagree with this prediction on many levels, but he makes a reasonable argument that should be at least listened to carefully. - JS
The Future of Work: The New Order of Business, Tom Malone, 2004
Explores how networks are flattening, distributing, and virtualizing business, and implications.
The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and Economics, Eric Beinhocker, 2006
Masterful look at the economics ofchange and innovation, in the tradition of Joseph Schumpeter.
The World Economy: Historical Statistics, DCS, Angus Maddison, 2003
Thousand-year estimates on global economic growth, around the world. Amazing topsight on the accelerating engine of change, since 1850, that is capitalism. Angus Maddison isa rare expert in this topic.


Politics, Security, and Democracy Books
Deception: Pakistan, the US, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons, Levy and Scott-Clark, 2007
Dynamics of Nonviolent Action, Gene Sharp, 1985
Great book on nonviolent resistance campaigns. "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mohandas Ghandi. Sharp's book and US State Dept aid were used by Optor in their successful student-led voter rebellion against Yugoslavian dictator Slobodan Milosovec.
Human Security Brief 2006, Human Security Report Project, 2007
Independent tracking of interstate and intrastate conflict and organized violence against civilians. Documents the steadily decreasing incidence rates of global violence in the last decade, anomalous and well-publicized outliers like the global Salafi jihad and the second Iraq War notwithstanding. Develops the concept of "human security" (security of individuals) as a complementary goal to national security (security of the state).
Making a Killing: The Business of War, Center for Public Integrity (CPI), 2002
Two year, $600K 11 part investigation by the CPI's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) into the business of war, arms trade, defense contracting, and other forms of monetized conflict. The ICIJ found that "a handful of individuals and companies with connections to governments, multinational corporations and, sometimes, criminal syndicates in the United States, Europe, Africa and the Middle East have profited from this war commerce – a growth industry whose bottom line never takes into account the lives it destroys."
No Place for Amateurs: How Political Consultants are Reshaping American Democracy, Dennis Johnson, 2007
Details the massive growth in special interest lobbies in US politics in the last two generations. A ratio of 150 lobbyists to one politician, cushy jobs for politicians in these firms and on big business boards afterward and other examples of institutionalized corruption that are legal in our current environment pretty much ensures plutocratic politics. Essential reading.
Radical Middle: The Politics We Need Now, Mark Satin, 2004
The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post-Cold War, Robert Kaplan, 2001
Great book on how democracy comes slowly in the developing world, and how the best thing in many emerging nations may be to support "enlightened dictators" as long as they are engaged in economic liberalization and are publicly committed to slow but obvious political liberalization. Kaplan also notes that unless we deal now with the problems of the developing world, we will see new forms of global resistance, possibly worse than Al Qaeda.
The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama, 2006
The Great Big Book of Tomorrow: A Treasury of Cartoons, Tom Tomorrow, 2003
The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, Benjamin Friedman, 2005
Analysis of the value of economic growth to creating a healthy democracy. Individuals and societies are more trusting, more inclusive, more open to change when they see their and their children's futures as both progressing and secure. During economic stagnation and downturns, democratic institutions suffer. Average full-time incomes for Americans have fallen 15% in real terms since 1975, and Friedman sees this as one reason our democracy and communities have weakened over this period.
The One-Hour Activist: Fifteen Ways to Fight for Your Issues, Christopher Kush, 2004
Quick grassroots actions that persuade lawmakers to listen. There's no good reason to be passive in the networked society. Find others, make change.
What If’s? Of American History, Robert Crowley, 2004


Society 1 (Big): Culture, Media, Education and Religion Books
A Brief History of Everything, Ken Wilber, 2007
"A series of original views on many topics of current controversy, including gender wars, multiculturalism, modern liberation movements, and the conflict between various approaches to spirituality." Includes a valuable systems theory of human philosophy of thought (the Four Quadrants/Integral theory).
Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic, John de Graaf, 2005
Great book on the cultural excesses of American society: consumption overload, debt, waste, anxiety, self-indulgence, and apathy for the non-self.
America's Perfect Storm: Three Forces Changing Our Nation's Future, ETS, 2007
A forecast that in the US, several long term forces 1) declining math and reading skills, 2) need for literacy and higher ed to compete in the information economy, 3) major demographic shifts (legal and illegal immigration), and 4) a widening rich-poor divide are all converging to create a "perfect storm" of greatly declining US educational effectiveness, lower workforce competitiveness, and increasing class inequity in coming years. Forsees a highly stratified US society in 2020: a well-educated, well paid top tier, a small and shrinking middle class, and a large uncompetitive and marginally literate underclass.
Copyrights and Copywrongs: Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity, Siva Vaidhyanathan, 2003
The history and evolution of copyright, how it came to be corporate controlled, and strategies and solutions for improving its public service.
Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations, Christopher Lasch, 1979/1991
Classic futurist work that addressed then-new and now-major trends in the failure of the family as an institution, state paternalism and the erosion of individual authority, the culture of celebrity, conformity, consumerism, self-indulgence, and apathy. Lasch's thesis is that narcissism and consumerism are a reaction to the fear of being nothing in a world of increasing complexity [and we might add, velocity of change]. Fortunately, other options are available. What are Lasch's solutions? A return to self-reliance, the family, cultivated friendships, nature, the community, and the work ethic.
Feed: A Modern Dystopia, MT Anderson, 2004
Kids as consumer robots talking Orwellian newspeak due to 24/7 corporate internet feeds. Chilling dystopian fiction that seems all too likelyfor some increasingly manipulated and disenfranchised segment of our future society, even as we recognize these feeds will be delivered not via some improbable "neurojack" but rather by our ubiquitous wearable and embedded computing devices.
Innovation and its Discontents: How our Broken Patent System Endangers Innovation, and What to Do About It, Adam Jaffee, 2004
Eloquent look at the problems of the current patent system, particularly the changes in U.S. patent law that began in 1984, in favor of large corporations, and what can be done to improve patent quality and accountability to the public, which grants them in the first place.
Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes, Mark Penn, 2007
An insightful look, in the tradition of Megatrends and The Tipping Point, at the many social stratification trends occurring in our modern freedom- and individuality-oriented culture, and the social shifts and business opportunities they represent.
Scanning the Future: 20 Big Thinkers on the World of Tomorrow, Yorick Blumenfeld, 1999
Interviews with eminent scientists, engineers, statesmen and others. Thoughts on how to build a better future for ourselves and the planet.
The Assault on Reason: The Challenge to American Democracy, Al Gore, 2007
How media monopolies and government opportunism have weakened democracy, and a number of ideas for change.
The Meme Machine: Imitation and Social Intelligence, Susan Blackmore, 2000
Agood start at exploring the idea that self-replicating ideas, which jump from brain to brain in our highly imitative human culture, are another level of evolutionary development on top of self-replicating genes, which jump from cell to cell to create life and its biological imperatives. Memes (good ideas that are worthy of imitation) have a "life of their own" in culture. Memeplexes like "the self" are really just one special collection of such ideas. Fascinating way to rethink who you are.
The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell, 2002
Treats ideas like epidemics. Discusses social roles (connectors, mavens, salesmen) and the dynamics of behavior change.
Virtual Charter Schools and Home Schooling, Carol Klein, 2006
Explores the virtual charter school, which allows the socialization of home schooled peers who are all educated under the same "charter," whatever that may be. Is a virtual class of 30 empathetic high-achievers adequate socialization? If so, will virtual charter micro-schools be increasingly realistic options for educating self-reliant and innovative youth inside a larger culture of narcissism and apathy?


Society 2 (Medium): Business and Organizations Books
Conquering Uncertainty: Understanding Corporate Cycles, Theodore Modis, 1998
Seeing What's Next: Using Innovation to Predict Industry Change, Clay Christensen, 2004
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable, Patrick M. Lencioni, 2002
The Logic of Failure: Avoiding Error in Complex Situations, Dietrich Dorner, 1997
How our mental habits can set us up for error, and how to guard against it in management.


Society 3 (Small): Personal & Careers Books
Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture, Juliet B. Schor, 2005
Outlines the incredibly sophisticated and relentless marketing manipulation of kids, and the resulting passivity, commercialism, and alienation from authentic values and passions that emerges. Amazing stats like the average 10 year old has memorized about 400 brands (but still knows virtually none of the countries or cultures of the world), that R-rated movies are marketed to 9-year-olds, that the target readership of Seventeen magazine is now preteens. Ideas for ways parents (primarily), educators and govt (very secondarily), and advertisers (least likely) can lessen these problems.
Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway, Susan Jeffers, 2006
Excellent practical techniques for overcoming fear, indecision, anger, and self-image problems to get to personal action and growth. Very often faulty thinking is at the root of our fear. We need to learn to "do first those most important things that scare us" and watch ourselves as we confront them. Courage can be learned, and this book is a great introduction to how to do that.
Happier: Learn the Secrets of Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment, Tal Ben-Shahar, 2007
Workbook for one of the most popular courses (positive psychology) at Harvard U. Dr. Ben-Shahar discusses the blend of reason and emotion, short and long-term orientation, here-and-now vs. big picture, path and destination thinking, that leads to happier, more meaningful, more productive lives.
How We Talk Can Change the Way We Work: 7 Lang. for Transform., Kegan & Lahey, 2002
You have as much control over the way you speak to others as you do over your attitude. Use it!
Insurance for Dummies, Jack Hungelmann, 2001
A good overview of how to manage risk by purchasing insurance, a key futures planning tool. The kind of people who purchase insurance and do investing have strong personal foresight. When we overcome our fears and get good with these topics, we become foresighted as well. The key with insurance is to understand, and learn how to minimize your real level of risk, and to purchase only the amount of insurance you really need. As your personal assets grow, you can self-insure more. Whether its car, home, health, life, liability, event, or other insurance, this book is a good place to start.
Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Mind, V.S. Ramachandran, 1999
By looking at people with damaged brains, a neuroscientist looks at the way past experience, emotion, and our unconscious and conscious mind construct meaning about the world. Fascinating insights for gaining self-awareness and improving your mental "influence" over your own behaviors.
Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer, Saul Alinsky, 1989
Classic text on how to live with an activist's mindset. Change is always painful to people. Sometimes you need to be an irritant to others to get the social change that is needed. Alinsky gives lots of examples from history of effective "radicals."
Simple Living Guide, Janet Luhrs, 1997
Tips on thriving with less clutter, consumption, and expense in all facets of your life, by the editor of the Simple Living Journal.
The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader, John Maxwell, 2007
Key traits like character, courage, focus, generosity, listening, passion, that inspire leadership.
The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom, Don Miguel Ruiz, 2001
Be impeccable with your words. Don't take anything personally. Don't make assumptions. Always do your best. Ruiz illuminates these four simple habits, and the tremendous personal empowerment that flows from them, if you do the hard work of internalizing them and living by them. This brief book gets New-Agey, preachy, and hyperbolic in its ancillary claims, but discerning readers can look beyond this to glean the essential wisdom within.
The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do, Judith Rich Harris, 1999
Excellent evidence and argument by the self-taught author of a college textbook on child development why parental upbringing has such a small effect on child development. Increasingly we find it is the nature of the peer group that is the primary influencer. Implications of this are not only the obvious, to get one's child into a "better school," but profound: if a child is raised around a special subset of high-standards peers (home-schooled, extracurricular, or otherwise) who have learned how to analyze both the best and the worst today's youth culture, they will take these insights to heart.
The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need, Andrew Tobias, 2005
Good basic investment advice, including a great deal be-conscious-of-your-expenses and heres-how-to-spend-less common sense.
The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need, Juliet B. Schor, 1999
Portrait of the "getting and spending" culture that pushes so many of us into debt and unsatisfying consumption, and a profile of "downshifters" who find a way out. Nice thesis on the way television watching is causally correlated with overspending, particularly among youth, who are being the most aggressively manipulated these days.
The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, Barry Schwartz, 2005
Data and insights on the massive increase in choice and the corresponding cognitive load on today's consumers, and the lack of adequate external filters and internal inhibitions to keep us from getting stressed and unhappy in the midst of all that plenty.
The Resiliency Advantage: Master Change, Bounce Back from Setbacks, Al Siebert, 2005
Great followup book by the author of The Survivor Personality. Explains how to recognize and admire resiliency traits in others and how to build them in yourself.
The Road to Excellence: The Acquisition of Expert Performance, K. Anders Ericsson, 1996
Ericsson's original work on the ease of acquiring expertise via disciplined practice, in spite of one's inherited talent or upbringing. His Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, 2006, is his followup work, and one of our great futures books.
Waking Up in Time: Inner Peace in Times of Accelerating Change, Peter Russell, 2007
Tips for finding peace, doing good, and living well in our modern ever-accelerating world.
Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation, Jon Kabat-Zinn, 2005
Great advice and habits for being mindful, stress-minimized, and conscious in a world that tries to take away your self-awareness at every turn.
Why Good Things Happen to Good People, Stephen Post, 2007
Research on the mental and physical health benefits of doing good and helping others. Affirms the adage: "Want to be happy? Make others happy."
Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes: Behavioral Econ., Belsky & Gilovich, 2000
Why do otherwise rational people act so foolishly in relation to money? Insights from the emerging science of behavioral economics.


Realistic Fiction Books
[Realistic fiction has major parts (not just a few) which feel like they actually could happen in the future, under certain circumstances. Most fantasy and SF doesn't count as realistic--there are exceptions however, and if you think some particular aspect of a fantasy or SF work feels realistic, include it here and explain why. Future fiction is a subgenre of general or science fiction that feels realistic most of the way through, to many readers. Good future fiction is hard to write, as you can imagine.]
List Fiction Books Below in Alpha Order by Title, With Brief Comments.

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, 1932.
This dystopian novel describes a hedonistic world where family, culture,and art are destroyed. Even though people are basically happy and healthy, everyone has lost their identity and individual control over their fate. It's a good thought-provoking book because many of the things in the book (or at least parallels) already exist in today's reality. It's somewhat frightening because it suggests that eventually we might be genetically engineered to live certain lives and to do certain jobs, made to be artificially and superficially happy by what we are assigned to do.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
Most people know this book by the movie that was made of it, directed by Ridley Scott, Blade Runner. I believe that there will be a time, when robots will be possible, and then they will also have to be kept in check. This link is to the Amazon site where the book is.

Dust, Charles R. Pellegrino, 1999
This book pulls information from the past (cataclysmic events - dinosaurs extinction, the Ice Age) to make an inference to what could happen in the future. The author is saying that it's high time another even like those happens based on the pattern of the past. It's geared more towards an environmentalist futurist in that one animal's extinction completely threw off the balance of the entire world and launched it into chaos.

Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card, 1980
An amazing story about a young boy who is chosen to be trained to fight for Earth. An alien race call buggers is threatening the existence of man, and Ender is chosen to go to a battle school in space. This book is fairly realistic and has some cool technologies. The story is amazing, and has the biggest surprise in any book I have ever read.

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, 1953
This dystopian novel is set in a time when critical thought is suppresed and firemen burn books and the houses that contain them as opposed to actually stopping fires. Even today, the book effectively analyzes the growing trend of escapism in our society and the effects of the mindless, mass media entertainment that we increasingly get exposed to every day. Out of the several classical dystopias of its time, it is likely the most relevant today, especially because it deals with a future caused by society itself, not the government.

Foundation, Isaac Asimov, 1951.
If I didn't tell you this book was almost 60 years old, you might never guess. Asimov is eerily prescient in many passages. This novel (and the series that it evolved into) is based on the idea that a man has come up with a way to predict the future on a galactic scale; the model doesn't work for small groups, but only billions or trillions of people. If you enjoy science fiction in even the slightest bit, you will enjoy this book.

Net Force Series,Tom Clancy and Steve R. Pieczenik, 1999
This series involves policing a new type of crime, cyber-crimes. The crimes themselves are not too futuristic, but the way the net is accessed is pretty inovative. It involves sitting in a chair and plugging in (Matrix-esque) but it can be customized however you choose, So looking for a particular piece of information could be done on the net as if you were a pirate with a treasure map. It is a very interesting series and can give a glimpse at the future of the internet and crimes associated with it. - Eric Kaplan

The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood, 1998
A thoughtful dystopia built on one big assumption: an outbreak of human sterility, and two big and at least plausible consequences: a global fundamentalist backlash, and a nuclear war. Children of Men, 2006 is very similar.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams 1979
An excellent science fiction tale that predicts many currently existing technologies, even though they are the invention of other societies in the book, and takes a satirical look at our own psychology. It even predicts a few social trends long before they crop up in society.

The Roads Must Roll, Robert A. Heinlein, 1940 in Astounding Science Fiction
This short story is a remarkably perceptive tale about how transportation becomes increasingly important to how society functions. It's a incredibly interesting and exciting story as well as proposing interesting possibilites for the future.

The Stand, Stephen King, 1978
This book carries out a story of a virus that kills most of mankind. An extreme military research problems goes wrong and widespread death follows and this book projects a possible scenario if this were to happen.

The Two Faces of Tomorrow (Graphic Novel), James P. Hogan, 2006
Set in a near future where humans have to face the consequences of living on the same planet with large computers that are beginning to "think" and control their own world (including robots that repair them). Will the first truly self-aware computer be friend or foe? To find out, the U.S. puts the world's most advanced computer on a space station (with a nuclear destruct safeguard) to see if it remains "friendly" and is willing to follow orders even after it "wakes up." A great story that hasn't yet been made into a blockbuster sci-fi movie. I could see a prequel and a sequel to it as well. Hopefully soon!



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