Just got a plug from Bruce Sterling (addressed to his Viridian mailing list,
not to me personally) for his new book: "Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next
Fifty Years". Appears just a bit too diffuse to serve as a good focus of
discussion for a Salon, but nonetheless like a very entertaining must-read
for any avid futurist.

Says he's just doing a brief tour, but he will make two stops in the Bay
Area, both this Wednesday, January 15, "02002" (sic--see Long Now):

12:30 pm
Stacey's Books
581 Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94105

7:30 pm
Cody's Books
2454 Telegraph Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94704


I don't know if he's planning to still be in town Friday evening, but I'll
tip him off to the Salon in case he might.



Book Description, as provided by Amazon.com:

³Nobody knows better than Bruce Sterling how thin the membrane between
science fiction and real life has become, a state he correctly depicts as
both thrilling and terrifying in this frisky, literate, clear-eyed sketch of
the next half-century. Like all of the most interesting futurists, Sterling
isn¹t just talking about machines and biochemistry: what he really cares
about are the interstices of technology with culture and human history.²
-Kurt Andersen, author of Turn of the Century

Visionary author Bruce Sterling views the future like no other writer. In
his first nonfiction book since his classic The Hacker Crackdown, Sterling
describes the world our children might be living in over the next fifty
years and what to expect next in culture, geopolitics, and business.
Time calls Bruce Sterling ³one of America¹s best-known science fiction
writers and perhaps the sharpest observer of our media-choked culture
working today in any genre.² Tomorrow Now is, as Sterling wryly describes
it, ³an ambitious, sprawling effort in thundering futurist punditry, in the
pulsing vein of the futurists I¹ve read and admired over the years: H. G.
Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, and Alvin Toffler; Lewis Mumford, Reyner Banham,
Peter Drucker, and Michael Dertouzos. This book asks the future two
questions: What does it mean? and How does it feel? ²

Taking a cue from one of William Shakespeare¹s greatest soliloquies,
Sterling devotes one chapter to each of the seven stages of humanity: birth,
school, love, war, politics, business, and old age. As our children progress
through Sterling¹s Shakespearean life cycle, they will encounter new
products; new weapons; new crimes; new moral conundrums, such as cloning and
genetic alteration; and new political movements, which will augur the way
wars of the future will be fought.

Here are some of the author¹s predictions:
€ Human clone babies will grow into the bitterest and surliest adolescents
ever.
€ Microbes will be more important than the family farm.
€ Consumer items will look more and more like cuddly, squeezable pets.
€ Tomorrow¹s kids will learn more from randomly clicking the Internet than
they ever will from their textbooks.
€ Enemy governments will be nice to you and will badly want your tourist
money, but global outlaws will scheme to kill you, loudly and publicly, on
their Jihad TVs.
€ The future of politics is blandness punctuated with insanity.
€ The future of activism belongs to a sophisticated, urbane global network
that can make money‹the Disney World version of Al Qaeda.

Tomorrow Now will change the way you think about the future and our place in
it.

About the Author
BRUCE STERLING is the author of nine novels, three of which were selected as
New York Times Notable Books of the Year. The Difference Engine, co-written
with William Gibson, was a national bestseller. He has also published three
short-story collections and one nonfiction book, The Hacker Crackdown. He
edited the anthology Mirrorshades and has written for many magazines,
including Newsweek, Fortune, Harper¹s, Details, Whole Earth Review, and
Wired, where he has been a contributing writer since its conception. In
1999, he won the Hugo Award in the short-story category. He lives in Austin,
Texas.