The near future, by subject.
Every theme with at least three pieces gets its own page: the reviews and essays, and what their predictions add up to.
AI and machine minds
Companions, assistants, agents and minds that aren't ours: what fiction imagined, and what is actually arriving.
Surveillance and scoring
Cameras, feeds, ratings and prediction: the watched life, from Seahaven to the social credit score.
Space
Moon bases, Mars settlements, orbital debris and planetary defence: the near future above our heads.
Climate and scarcity
Water, heat, crowding and repair: the fiction that tries to live inside the climate decades.
Pandemics and collapse
Outbreaks, infertility and the slow failure of systems: what the plague stories got right after 2020.
Borders and migration
Walls, camps, remote labour and who gets to move: the near future of the border.
Clones and genetics
Designer children, clones and genetic sorting: the body as a product line.
Grief and technology
Griefbots, uploads and the machines that remember the dead: mourning in the near future.
Memory
Recorded lives, split selves and replayable pasts: what happens when nothing is forgotten.
Work
Severed workers, remote bodies and robot colleagues: the near future of the job.