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A Brief History Of The Future by Oona Strathern
01/01/2008 . Source: Geoff Willmetts 
pub: Constable Robinson. 322 page enlarged paperback. Price: £ 8.99 (UK). ISBN: 978-1-84529-218-8. Buy A Brief History Of The Future in the USA - or Buy A Brief History Of The Future in the UK  check out website: www.constablerobinson.com
The title 'A Brief History Of The Future' should be something any Science Fiction reader have some interest in. After all, a large proportion of SF uses the future for a setting. Indeed, this book heavily refers to many SF writers from HG Wells and Jules Verne to Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and Bruce Sterling. I should point out this is more to do with predicting future trends than their stories. All of them have been involved in analysing the way things are going that these days there are companies who are paid for their analysis of the subject. If anything, if you write SF you dabble with this by taking a situation and extrapolate a worse case scenario. Futurists, to give them their correct name, do the same but without the fiction.
This book follows how this has evolved over the years to modern day examples of how corporations pay futurist companies to postulate the way things are going so they can adapt what they sell a few years down the line. This is not an exact science where dates are concerned and authoress Oona Strathern points out that they can't exactly pander to a company's desire to sell product but only to show where patterns are leading. Considering the number of companies around dealing with such work this business is lucrative and rather hard-nosed in getting their point across. Whether it can be perceived as future-fulfilment is something that should have many of you discussing into the night. After all, if a corporation takes a scenario on board and works its products towards it then is it fulfilling the pattern or just being ready for the time its acceptable?
I have to say I was rather impressed by this book. Understanding trends and social development has to be part of any SF writer's vocabulary and as its an indexed book, something you're likely to dig into for inspiration or ideas occasionally. If you just read SF then this book will certainly show you things you've never considered before. If I have to be critical of anything then it's the length of the early chapters. As they are so readable, you do get stuck in but they are massive long reads and it would have made more sense to have had more malleable chunks. That aside, this book should be on your shelves and heavily dog-eared within a few months.
GF Willmetts
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