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W. Warren Wagar

A Short History of the Future Hardcover – September 20, 1989

by W. Warren Wagar (Author)

3.9 14 ratings

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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.

Print length

339 pages
Language

English
Publisher

University of Chicago Press
Publication date

September 20, 1989
Dimensions

6 x 1 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

0226869016
ISBN-13

978-0226869018
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3.9 out of 5

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ittybittycutiekitty

Worth a look.

Reviewed in the United States on October 13, 2016

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Interesting thought experiment, goes heavy-duty into socialist utopian la-la land toward the end. Not sure if I'll make it to the end.

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Book lover

An A for effort

Reviewed in the United States on September 1, 2021

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A history of the next couple hundred years. A very detailed and complex analysis but largely wrong as he knew it would be.

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Travis J. I. Corcoran

uncreative rehash of 100 years of ill conceived utopias

Reviewed in the United States on February 19, 2002

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First let me say that I did not dislike this book because it presented a leftist utopia: I *loved* the novel _Ecotopia_, because it was genuinely different; something new under the sun.
A Short History of the Future, on the other hand, was a tired rehash of every leftist utopian scheme I've ever seen, and even lifted Chomskian phrases and Marxist rhetoric and just pasted it in. It's fine to have a well thought out leftist vision of the future, it's pathetic and lazy to have a recycled cut-and-paste vision of the future, no matter what the political viewpt.
In the author's future history, capitalism betrays itself by concentrating wealth ever more densely in the hands of just a few. The Evil Capitalist Overlords, in an updated version of Marx, use up their middle manager in a white-collar hell of forced relocations, long trips, etc. Happilly, the Soviet Union persists into the middle of the 21st century (yes, the self-described "futurist" author, writing in 1988, missed the fall of the USSR less than two yrs in the future) and provides an alternative. From the thesis and antithesis of capitalism (you can tell this was written by an academic) comes a vaunted Third Way (wow, this is *really* new stuff; I haven't seen such ideas since...well, any progressive newspaper from the 1920s...). The third way has class conciousness merged with ecological conciousness (wow! amazing! Who could imagine such a thing in 1988...besides, say, the German Green party?). Child raising is gradually passed off to professionals, and marriage becomes delegitimized and illegal.
Oh, to make this only slightly disguised academic manifesto really sad, you have to know that the founder of the Third Way political group was a graduate student in the early 21st century.
The book has a lot of great reviews on the back cover, but careful reading shows that most of them come from friends and associates of the author: log-rolling at its finest.
This book is almost unreadable.
Save your money.

18 people found this helpful

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ILoveBooks

Good Read but I had issues....

Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2011

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I enjoyed reading this book. There were some issues with the book that got to me - especially all the socialist claptrap (I'm a liberterian), however I did think parts of it were 'realistic'.

2 people found this helpful

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Shir

Engrossing read

Reviewed in the United States on June 23, 2003

This was one of the most engrossing books - at the juncture between fiction and reality - that I've read for quite some time. It's certainly light years ahead of any (serious) fiction available at the moment - the next best contemporary fiction I've read is by Don DeLillo - but this book by Wagar demotes that type of quick-kick action into the pornography league.
Yes, the world is a sad and boring place, there really isn't a hell of a lot that's worth reading out there, and I doubt whether any other book that's equally engrossing as Wagar's will be written by anyone, fiction-writer, social historian or philosopher, for at least another 100 years. I can only recommend people to return to the greats of world literature - the epic sagas in particular - as a way out of the current cultural poverty. Then again, this is what makes a great read, that it only comes along once a century or so.
The reason why this is a good read, and most other stuff on bookstore shelves isn't, is no great mystery: Wagar has read more, sifted reality and thought further than 99% of academics and fictionalists alive today. It must have driven him to near insanity, but he did it. Genius is 90% or so hard work, and Wagar has done his homework, reflected, studied the facts.
That said, this probably has to be seen as science fiction in retrospect. The collapse of the Commonwealth is akin to the collapse of Communism in 1991. We are now in something similar to the era of the 'Smalls' and ecomysticism - i.e we are currently living 'utopia'. The US may have to implode as well. The future has in a sense been abrogated. We should abrogate this tacky utopia now and start grappling with reality again - which means using enlightened common sense to establish a non-bureaucratic world order of law, and constructive help to those who are mired in poverty the world over. We should also allow, and even find ways of encouraging, those who are bent on war to slaughter one another, while airlifting civilians out to safe zones.
In a sense, ideology has come to an end, that's why we're more or less heading for a synthesis between Wagar's Commonwealth and House of Earth - or at least we should be - this is what any thinking person should realise by now and should start working towards in the confines of his/her own life. Better this realism than more utopias, more science fiction, more ideologies. There won't be any more good reads available for a long time to come - so kick this stuff, get out of your solipsism, and return to the human fold.

5 people found this helpful

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Cory Johnson

Not an 'end of the world' but a telling of the Future

Reviewed in the United States on March 14, 2001

This is an amazing book, I wish more were writen like it but it seems that many authors do not have the intelligence or sociological grasp of the future as does W. Warren Wagar. This story is not an 'end of the world' type genre story but the ultimate truth that one arrives to is that no government, scientific, or socioligal schemes or ideologies are going to perfect man. though we may be a more advanced people who change in beliefs and idea over the span of human history, we still will generally be human, and W. Warren Wagar accomplishes this profound realization. I feel fortunate that there is atleast one book about the future that does not put us in a utopia or self destrusted hell on earth but rather the same innevitable patterns of history; were still living, and life is still hard.

3 people found this helpful

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