The Economist. Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm your host Rosie Bloor and today we've got something different for you. For the whole show we're talking about my favourite thing, books.
Last Christmas, we asked our correspondence which books would inform us about the present moment. I can't be entirely certain that those books helped us deal with the craziness of this year. So this time, we thought we'd ask a different question. We're discussing books that help us think about what's coming next.
We've got a number of books to talk about and to help me leaf through the pages are Oliver Morton, who likes to call himself the economist planetary affairs editor. To be fair, your colleague Jason likes to call me that. And Shashank Joshi, our defence editor. I prefer to go by Apocalypse Editor at that time. So with the two horsemen of the Apocalypse with me, hi Oli, tell me what the big changes are that you see coming in the future.
Well, a soup of them, some greatest hits. We're definitely talking about AI. I still think that augmented reality, the idea of having overviews put in between you and the actual physical world that changed the way you see it, I think that's growing. And also the social results of new ways of forming connections in the online world still seems to me to be a process that although clearly has already gone a long way, may have a lot further to go.
And Ollie, I'm absolutely sure that you've got a book in your hand ready to talk about that tells us about this kind of idea. Well, on my screen anyway, yes, I thought that a book I'd like to talk about for the future at the moment is a book by Verna Vinci, a very nice man who died, unfortunately, earlier this year, one of the best American science fiction authors of his generation. And his book, Rainbow's End,
actually notionally takes place in 2025. It's not recognizably the 2025 we are about to visit, but it does pick up on some of these themes, themes about neural control, about AI, about social media and the way they create interactions and about augmented reality that I think still read very interestingly, even though they haven't quite worked out that way, at least not yet. I've read part of this book, not all of it. Did you think that what Vinci describes is coming?
I'm not sure it's coming as he describes it. Vintage is very much an obvious of ideas and frankly I think in this book he gets caught up in a plot that is almost bewildering even on rereading and the essence of the book sits outside that and one of the things is our protagonist who is a genuinely very unpleasant person has been brought back from Alzheimer's disease.
and he's gone through a number of rejuvenation therapies which leave him in fact relatively young looking and with a lot of things to learn again and also he feels without the great gift of his previous life. And so this character is then put into a high school because that's the only place where you can teach people about this stuff and falls in with high school kids and to a degree he's are sort of like
normy person put into the weird world. But you discover this world of overlays of decisions about overlays. I think it's the first novel I ever read that had just quite a lot of the text is direct messages between characters that other people can't see that really part takes of this world and also worries about what things might be possible in a world with this amount of ubiquitous computation.
I should say I'm actually quite enjoying it. And one of the things I find fascinating about it is that because this guy had Alzheimer's and then is being brought back to health and full mind, he's actually having to re-experience some of the horrors he's already experienced in life. Yes, it's a thoughtful moving novel that has both real technological and also metaphorical implications for the world we're heading into.
Shashank, have you read it? I have not read it. It sounds intriguing. I would like to read it, although I'm very much at the entry-level phase of science fiction. I must say, for just pure reading enjoyment, I would say that it's two big space operas, far upon the deep and the deepness in the sky are probably better. In some ways, they're more involving. But in terms of thinking about the near future, it has a great deal to offer.
Hi everybody, so I don't normally jump in but I'm producer Rory. I love that you just mentioned Verdi Vinci. He's one of my favourite authors. But in Rainbow's End, I think the best bit about it is the life extension stuff. I read a book a few years ago now that I genuinely think is going to come to pass that suggests that humanity is going to live a vastly longer time than we do at the moment.
Rory, this is something you've regaled me with in the pub already. But give me the appropriate listener version, please. OK, well, the book is called Ageless, and it's by Andrew Steele. And he basically sets up all of the different signs that's looking at how we might be able to change the thing that happens when we get older, which is old-aged senescence. Basically, ourselves decide that they're going to die and then go through programmed cell death.
In other mammals, there are many that live for a very long time. Bow head whales about 200 years, naked mole rats lived about 36 despite being super tiny. Basically, animals have perfected ways in which you can extend life by a really long time. And now science is looking into all manner of different ways that we might be able to do it for humans. It's a long and complex science book
But it's written really well. And I came away thinking that I'm going to live to like 300 at least. So I really genuinely think this is coming in our futures. I think that's wonderful Rory. It reminds me some of these ideas come under the overall concept of the longevity event horizon where lifetimes get longer by more than a year for every year you live. And thus your lifetime starts extending away from you rather than contracting.
This is an idea that I think I was first introduced to by Christopher Lockwood, our Europe editor, when we were both as young or possibly even younger than you are now. And it seemed like a very fine idea to us. I don't think either Chris or I feel that our years to come are in fact at the moment lengthening. I can't speak for Chris.
Well, but I should also say just as a plug, we did a very wonderful technology quarterly on the science of aging by our colleague Jeff Carr a year and a bit ago, which I know readers liked a great deal. And if you want to go and check it out, it really is a terrific piece of journalism on this subject. It was brilliant. It also convinced me that I'm right. And so, yeah, I'll see you in a thousand years, Ali, and we can discuss it further then.
One of the things that came up in the pub when we were talking about this idea was whether we would want to live forever. And actually, personally, I think that fiction is a great way to explore this because I didn't think I did want to. Rory's totally convinced he does and I think it's a fascinating idea. I'm perfectly willing to cope with whatever comes next. As long as I'm alive to experience it, it's going to be fun. It's going to be fun.
It doesn't want to take your job from your rosy, but isn't this the point where we have to ask Shashank to talk about nuclear war? I mean, I was going to say I'm soon going to disabuse you of that notion, or if you wanted optimism, you should absolutely not have invited me on this show. I think it's all listeners will know by now.
I picked a couple of books from this year that I thought get it this problem in a couple of different ways. One of them is Bob Woodward's book Ward. It's all about the conflict in Ukraine, but particularly the great nuclear war scare of late 2022.
The other book is Nuclear War, a scenario by Annie Jacobson, which equally cheerfully looks at the mechanics of how a nuclear conflict would actually unfold should it occur.
And remind us exactly what happened in 2022, the big nuclear war scare. Well, this is really the moment at which Ukraine's forces are on the advance. They've kettled up tens of thousands of Russians in Hassan Province in southwestern Ukraine. The Russians are unraveling in the east in Harkiev with the Ukrainians mount this lightning offensive. And the prospect of a Russian collapse looks plausible. It looks as though the Ukrainians might be at the mouth of Crimea. They might advance very fast. And
What we now know very clearly from this reporting, I've spoken to officials about it myself, is that there was a real fear of Russia using a nuclear weapon of some sort, probably a non-strategic or tactical nuclear weapon. In other words, one with a slightly smaller yield than the stuff that it would be blown up over cities.
But American intelligence, according to Woodward, said there was a 50% chance Putin would use tactical nuclear weapons if Ukraine surrounded these 30,000 Russian forces in Hassan. And this resulted in a burst of diplomacy, the Americans and the Brits and the French calling the Chinese, the Indians, imploring them to lean on the Russians. And it didn't happen, of course. We're all still here. Ukraine is not irradiated. But
In a way, it was probably one of the most dangerous moments in geopolitics. I would say since the early 1980s, since the great able archer warscare of 1983, and that's a generational experience in a way where relearning these things again. What do these books suggest about the possibility of nuclear war in the future?
I'd say a few things. One is they show us that nuclear war is this presence in geopolitics, again, in a very direct and forceful way. Nuclear weapons haven't been used, of course, but they have hung over the conflict. They've been at the backs of people's minds. They were at the back of the minds of NATO leaders as they decided how far to support Ukraine.
They were at the back of Joe Biden's mind as he decided whether to allow Ukraine to fire missiles into Russian territory. They've been at the back of Vladimir Putin's mind as he decided whether or not to strike back against European bases, which were being used to support Ukraine.
The point here is that this is not just a thing specific to Ukraine. They are a feature of international politics again in a big way. We see, for instance, in Asia, very clearly a sense among American and Chinese military planners. They are thinking consciously about how nuclear weapons might or might not be used and if they are used, how they would be used in a conflict over Taiwan. And so because there has been no nuclear use since 1945,
Everything we know about nuclear war is really theoretical, conceptual, philosophical. We grapple with these fragments of experience and evidence to guide us to the future. As the Experience Shashank made you think that nuclear war is more likely in the coming decades than you had thought, say, five years ago.
I think that nuclear use is probably more likely, and that's a function of a great power war being more likely than I would have thought it five years ago, either between Russia and NATO, if things go south in Ukraine and various other bad things happen, or in Asia. So, yes, I think I am more concerned than I was. On the other hand,
deterrence has also held deterrence has held in Europe. Ukraine has been invaded, but actually Putin hasn't attacked Europe. Europe hasn't fought Russian soldiers and nuclear weapons have also played a role in that terrifying, but sort of semi stabilizing edifice that has allowed the war to be contained in some fashion.
And that will presumably continue up until the moment when it doesn't. Well, nobody knows for sure, because the great phrase, there was a famous British civil servant called Michael Quinlan talked about nuclear weapons a lot. And one of the things he said was a nuclear state is one that no one can afford to make desperate. And there's a sort of eternal truth to that. But of course, the problem is you don't know what makes people desperate. And what does the Annie Jacobson book tell us?
This book doesn't really give us a great story. It just says, okay, they've launched it. Now what happens? It talks us through the mechanics of what would happen with presidential decision-making and the details, for instance, of American missile defenses that might try to engage with this, the nature of likely American retaliation, who in the American system debates all of these things. The president
has sole authority that people often think there are all these checks and balances on an American president. There really aren't. It's up to the president, and that includes the one who's incoming. And I think the book is quite good at spelling that out. Now, I should say the book did get a bit of pushback from nuclear experts who saw there were a number of technical errors and various things. So it's not perfect, but I think it's a useful exercise to help us think through each of the phases of an ICBM flying up, detonating the impact it has, and
Also, what a nuclear explosion on cities actually looks like. So Shashank, this is non-fiction and maybe not likely to happen.
This is a fictional scenario that is supposed to be rooted in plausible facts and processes. The chance of it occurring, I think, is very, very low probability. The thing about nuclear war is that such a high impact scenario, the move from unbelievably unlikely to very unlikely is still a very troubling increase.
Over the last few weeks, we've asked you, our listeners, to send your recommendations of books that give readers a realistic vision of what will happen in the future. And we've had plenty of suggestions via email and voice notes. Several of you fear that the Big Brother Society of George Orwell's 1984 is coming. With recent elections in mind, one listener recommended Timothy Snyder's duo of books on freedom and on tyranny.
But Karis Linus, who lives in the Philippines, is more confident about how things will go.
Believe it or not, I'm still hopeful for the future. I know that most books that predict the future tend to be grim, but I want to believe that things can get better. This is the reason why I'm currently reading a sound for the wild built by Becky Chambers. That may be pause because if we stop chasing endless goals, the future might not be so bleak and could look very different from the grim predictions in other books.
Paris' recommendation, Assam for the Wild, built by Becky Chambers, gives her pause and deals with an optimistic future rather than a grim one, both for humanity and for humanoid robots. Twanky technology is certainly something that many of you see being a huge part of how we're all going to live in the coming decades. OK, hello, my name is Krista Novotny.
and I'd like to recommend the book Quality Land from Mark Overkling. He's a German comedian and author. The book is a comedy about the near future where people are controlled by algorithms and how it is affecting their everyday life.
And the story begins with a man that gets delivered something he doesn't want, and he claims the algorithm is wrong, but nobody believes him that he is impossible. The algorithm does not make mistakes.
And there are a lot of more details like you have an earworm in your ear, which is always connected, which is your personal assistant. I think this will come pretty soon. And you're just talking to that and he knows everything about you and suggests that your new bubble is done automatically. And so there are a lot of concepts like this, a lot of aspects that are there will come in a certain way.
and we're already experiencing it. So this stuff about the profile that is shaped by your browser behavior is there. You get suggested stuff you want to buy right now. You still can choose, but maybe this is automated at some point because we are all lazy and this is a nice way to go. Oli, it's not every day you get recommended an algorithmic comedy.
I'm being recommended an algorithmic comedy by a non-algorithmic listener, so that's great. And I think it's really important to remember that comedy is a very important tool in thinking about the future, and much of the great work thinking about the future has had some comic or satirical edge, and any list of great thoughts about the future has to include at least three or four classic quotes from Douglas Adams. The Hitchhiker's Guide is one of the great books about the future, by which I mean about the present.
And so I'm always up for some comic German science fiction, so quality land is definitely now on my list. I was thinking it was a huge oversight that we hadn't mentioned Douglas Adams yet. Well, we've rectified it. We all have our towels.
Okay, so we've talked about living forever in nuclear war, both entirely contradictory, and we've had some positive suggestions from our listeners too. But many of you are concerned about the other crisis looming over humanity, and reckon that the climate and environment will see the end of us.
We've had recommendations for books that speak to this possibility, including Ministry of the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, a novel that deals with how you'll respond to the immediate climate crisis. Thank you to listener Jessica Peach for that. One of our listeners reading lists has given a fairly bleak view of our future. I'm Kristi. I'm 25. I'm calling from New York.
I think books have definitely informed a lot of my thoughts about the future, especially about how an environmental apocalypse will change human behavior, specifically bring about more conflict, greed, more injustice. Some of the books that I think explore these ideas are Severance by Ling Ma, Land of Milk and Honey by C. Pam Zhang, and the Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin.
They all tell vastly different stories, but also they all explore how the fear of scarcity can drive people to do terrible things to other humans in the pursuit of power. I think the behavioral and social consequences are going to be more widespread, and I think we'll see more variety in how people and societies respond. Sometimes for the better maybe, but mostly for the worse.
Oli, the human response to climate change and environmental catastrophe is pretty much your specialist subject. What are your thoughts? I think that it is indeed likely to be very varied, and I do agree that there will be existing power structures which will not respond to this well. I haven't read all of those books. I have read N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy, which I found very impressive, but I also found
to be best read, not purely as an environmental allegory. Or if so, as one that's top level, it's about the idea of the earth being sundered. The more general question though, the change in climate is a terrific subject for novelists in general, both to address in metaphorical terms, in practical terms, as Kim Stanley Robinson does, but also in poetic terms.
Okay, it's not all doom and gloom, and nor is it all sci-fi. Irena Select reports for The Economist from places including Southeast Asia and Latin America, and she's been reading about the environment and recommends a non-fiction book, Not the End of the World, by data scientist Hannah Ritchie.
The book is about how we can save the world, which she started to look at the numbers in climate change to debunk the myths that the world is doomed. Zooming out, she says the data show a very different picture compared with newspaper headlines and that some trends are moving in the right direction. And she is radical in her opposition to doomsday thinkers. She sees them as dangerous and undermining the efforts of people like her.
I have to admit, I'm one of these. I hoped that Richie, not the end of the world, would prove me wrong and would give me an antidote to doomsday thinking. When Richie slips into her dreams about the future, she shows us a world in 2060. By then, miraculously, everybody has put her recommendations into action.
The world's population has grown to 10 billion. It's warmer by 2 degrees, but technologies have mitigated any ill effect on food production. Taking an aerial shot, we can see that forests are growing back. Ecosystems are springing back into life.
We achieve things we can have this future if we want to. It's doable. We have the technology. Sounds like a magical, offer optimistic vision of the future. But I sincerely hope she is right. So Oli, Richie thinks we can have this future if we want to. Do you? Can we look positively towards 2060?
I'm a huge admirer of Hannah Ritchie and the website she works for, Our World and Data, it's probably one of the websites I look to for things most frequently. I think the problem is in the way that Irena and then you phrased it, this question of can we do this? There is no human all-encompassing we that can act in this way. The question is, can existing political and economic structures do this?
I think existing political and economic structures can probably do quite a lot, but I think we have to focus more than the completely God's-eye view offered by Hano and by our world in data. We have to focus on who gets to do what, when, who can you actually push? You can't just say we have the technology because we don't have the technology. Specific people have the technology that can be used in specific ways.
So in general, I quite agree. I think it's really helpful to know that many trends in the world are really quite positive and that many of the things that people put into doomsday predictions are exaggerated. At the same time, I slightly worry, and I think Hannah Ritchie does as well, about the idea that people then sit back and say, oh, it's all right, because you do then need the action to make these technologies used. And that's not something that this
raw good numbers take really offers you very much, but it's still as an antidote, as a counterpoint, as a palate cleanser, it's lovely. So we've got an antidote to the horror and apocalypse there, and I wanted to offer another one, actually, with a recommendation from me, with a book actually published in late 2023.
orbital by Samantha Harvey, which won this year's Booker Prize. It's not science fiction in the classic sense, though it is set in the near future. But it's set on the International Space Station, six astronauts from around the world are circling the Earth, and it covers a single day. So 16 orbits, they have 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets. It's a beautifully written book. It's got gorgeous sentiments. In many ways, it's a love letter to the Earth.
Love Letter is very evocative. How does Samantha Harvey see this romance going forward? So the reason I wanted to talk about it as a book that tells you what it will be like in the future is because really this is a story about humanity. What this is saying is in the future, just as in the past and in the present, we are all still going to be filled with love, hope, shame, greed, grief.
And what you do when you watch these astronauts in this space pod is really still there. They continue to be able to be surprised and they continue to be surprised by their own emotions. And they're amazed every time that they see the Earth again, you know, 16 sunrises and every time they're saying, wow, this is extraordinary. And for me, this is kind of one of those very basic truths about life.
In the future, you see a lot of novels full of how technology is going to completely change us and completely transform this and completely transform that. But to my mind, what Samantha's novel shows us is that we will always still be us. That essence of humanity isn't going to change whatever these technological advances bring to us. I think I agree with that. I certainly agree. It's an absolutely marvelous novel.
I think my slight caval is I don't think this novel set in the future. I think this novel set in the recent past. I mean, this novel is set on a space station that exists today with a crew very like the crews that are up to day. Research out that. And so I think what it actually does.
And I think this is an interesting thing about what the definition of science fiction isn't the one. It shows us that the future has already happened, at least for some people. There are people up there living the space age future already. And it's not that they're looking into our future. The future is here with us. And it's still a world in which humans have the feelings and the ambitions and the capacity for wonder that you describe.
And it's a world in which the Earth is already recognised as this gorgeous, ever-changing, ever-the-same object. So I think it's about how it's not in the future, it's right now. And I think that's the real power of the book. I think all of that is true, Ollie. And in fact, I was tempted to choose a book about the past. And actually, our colleague Charlotte Howard, who's the co-host of checks and balance, did go back to the past.
I chose the Heart is a Lonely Hunter, which is a novel by Carson McCullers. It's set in a mill town in the south in the late 1930s. It's a book that made her at a very young age, an instant literary star.
And the title is taken from a poem by William Sharp, who is a Scottish poet who said, deep in the heart of summer, sweet is life to me still, but my heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill. And the book is essentially about loneliness and the desire for human connection.
John Singer, the central character, is deaf and mute. His best friend and longtime companion, who was also deaf and mute, has been put in an insane asylum. And so he begins in this kind of state of disorientation and moves into a boarding house where he encounters these other characters. And John Singer, this deaf man, becomes a repository for these other people's musings. He's
where they go to express their frustrations and desires. And there's a common trait across the characters in the book where they have this kind of fundamental dissatisfaction with their lot, whether it has to do with the role of women or the treatment of black people.
There's a gap between what's in their heads, their ambition or their desire for change and their ability to effectuate that change or ambition. And I think that dissatisfaction and that feeling of loneliness is very resonant right now in 2024 in today's America, where you see a lot of simmering rage and segments of the American right, which I think is manifested in Donald Trump's
election, but also a really profound sense of disorientation in the American left. The reason this book came to mind to me now is both because of that present resonance, but also I think about what might come in American politics, which is born out of that loneliness and disorientation, a desire for connection, which I think is fundamentally
core to humans and what sets us apart from other animals. And the question for the future is kind of the question for John Singer is whether people can actually not just be frustrated and feel lonely, but hear each other. And that fundamental question felt very important to me as you think about the next chapter of American life.
It's interesting to hear Charlotte say that because what she's saying about the loneliness and the inability or ability of individuals to connect could be true for geopolitics too. It's going to be ever more important for us to be able to talk to each other as governments, as international organisations, and the idea that we might not or that we might need sounding boards is a scary one.
So I'd like to think that Charlotte and I have brought a bit of a human feel to today's slightly techie reading list. But for someone who can tie it all together, our final guest is Tom Standage, who edits the world ahead supplement.
As someone who thinks about the future kind of professionally at the economy, so I edit our annual trying to guess what's happening next year, but I also write a lot about tech. The reason I kind of went into journalism is that I'm interested in what the future looks like, and I think one of the best ways to look at that is, you know, one of the big trends in technology and geopolitics in economics, in demographics, and they are the things that actually define what the future looks like.
And I think reading science fiction is very helpful because it's a way of playing with possible futures and ideas about how things might work out. But I think the thing to remember about science fiction is that an awful lot of it is not really about the future. It is commentary on the present and it's a way of writing about the present and extending trends that you might see in the present and saying, well, what would happen if you took that to its furthest extreme?
And a lot of the science fiction I've been reading lately is very much grappling with contemporary themes. And I think a good example of this is Anne Lecky's Ancillary Justice series. Those are a set of books essentially about imperialism and slavery and gender and AI and the sort of interaction of those things. And it's very interestingly written. I mean, in the first book, you don't know the gender of several of the characters until quite far into the book.
which is sort of challenging you to say well why should you and why does it matter and why does knowing the gender of a character change how you think about them and so I find those sorts of things that science fiction can do the way it can challenge you and it can cast new light on contemporary debates I find that one of its important roles as well so it's not just about predicting the future it's also about commenting on the present.
So the human condition is more present than ever. And a lot of science fiction, I feel vindicated by my choice and obviously in thinking about the future. Shashank.
I think that one of the really interesting thing of reflecting on all of our choices is the way in which we've abstracted in different ways away from the present. Your choice was abstracted away by taking us away from the earth and just putting us away from its specific quarrels and details and just focusing on the humans in orbit, whizzing around, looking down. Some of the other works abstract away in different ways, projecting forwards,
But what strikes me is how much of the stuff that I read in a military context is, you know, we struggle to find the right analogies. It's people reaching for World War I. This looks like the psalm. This looks like a trench or this looks like Tom Clancy. It's either the far future or it's the ancient past. And our language is kind of grapples for one of those has to be put into one category.
What I find interesting when thinking about the wars I deal with and the conflicts I deal with is how much of them, a bit like Oli or Point about, orbital being about the recent past, is about how much of this is actually somewhere in the middle. I look at Ukraine and I don't see the Somme or I don't see Tom Clancy. I kind of see the Iran-Iraq war from the 1980s, which is quite recent. It's not science fiction, it's not a techno thriller, but it's just the very recent past illuminating our present.
Yeah, I think it's very interesting that you bring out the link with military speculation because one of the roots of science fiction in its modern form is military speculation. The famous book, The Battle of Dalking by Sir George Chesney, which says,
watch it, the Germans could come over and they could blow up dawking, which is obviously a very bad thing to happen. And that's the template very obviously for the War of the Worlds, which says Martians could come over and blow up Guilford, which is also obviously dreadful for the people of Surrey. But it also speaks to the adage of the famous, I think less read now, but still very worthwhile American science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon, which is that people
think that science fiction writers are trying to predict the future, and they're actually trying to prevent it. It's not that all science fiction is or should be dystopian. In fact, as we were reminded by one of our readers, much of it's not. However, that sense that we are taking something from the present and expanding on it, moving it in space or time to somewhere else, so we can look at it as Tom Stanford says, look at it from new angles.
That's a very important function of science fiction, but it's wrong to think that that means that its its import is necessarily far away. I mean, as orbital shows us, you can look at the science fictional present. These people who are watching the world for us and with us, 16 sunrises, 16 sunsets a day, that's the future that's already here. And we need to think about those sorts of futures, the seeds of which are within us now.
So the seeds of the future being within us now feels like a perfect place to wrap up. We've travelled from AI and life extension through nuclear war to algorithms taking over our lives, climate apocalypse possibly averted and the continued joy and agony of the human condition. We've had fiction and non-fiction, books set today in the past and some set in the far, far distant future.
I know anyway, which prophecies I'd pick have given the choice, but I suppose we can only ever guess at what's to come. I am anxious and excited. I've just got a great full reading list to Christmas, so thank you all. Thank you both very much. Great to have you with me. Thanks for having us. Yes, thanks, Rosie. And thank you to you, our listeners, for all your recommendations. I'm sorry we couldn't fit them all into today's show, but we appreciated everyone. Happy reading, everyone.
