FUTURES
By various authors, ed. Matt d’Ancona
Help make FUTURES - the collectible essay series that will change how we think
Publication date: November 2020

Sold out!
Digital Bundle
Futures collection
PLUS:
- All five books.
- Your name printed in the back of each book.

Signed Edition
PLUS:
- All five books, signed by the authors.
- Your name printed in the back of each book.

The Ultimate Feminist Edition
PLUS:
- 1 bundle of 5 books.
- Your copy of The Future of Men signed by the Pink Protest (Grace Campbell, Scarlett Curtis, Honey Ross and Alice Skinner).
- Limited to 10.

Frankie Boyle's Personal Dedication
PLUS:
- One set of all five books.
- Frankie Boyle will personally dedicate your copy of The Future of British Politics.
- Limited to 25.
Editor’s Annotated Edition - BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND!
PLUS:
- All five books, signed by the authors.
- One book in the series, of the editor's choosing, will be annotated personally by Matt.
- Extended to 10.

Editor's Annotated Edition - Liz Moseley
PLUS:
- All five books, signed by the authors.
- One book in the series, of the editor's choosing, will be annotated personally by Liz.
- Limited to 5.

Founder's Annotated Edition
PLUS:
- All five books, signed by the authors.
- One book in the series, of the editor's choosing, will be annotated personally by Katie.
- Limited to 5.

Edith's Annotated Edition
PLUS:
- All 5 books, signed by the authors
- One book in the series personally annotated by the Tortoise cartoonist, Edith.
- Limited to 5.

The Author's Edition: Frankie Boyle
PLUS:
- All five books, signed by the authors.
- One book in the series, of the editor's choosing, will be annotated personally by Frankie.
- Limited to 5.

Bidisha: The Serious Art edition
PLUS:
- All 5 books, signed by the authors.
- Your name printed in the back of each book.
- One original A5 print (unframed) signed by Bidisha (worth £100).
- Limited to 5.

Member's Edition
PLUS:
- All five books, signed by the authors.
- Your name printed in the back of each book.
- One year membership of Tortoise for you or a friend (worth £100).

Class of 2020 Patron
PLUS:
- 150 bundles of all five books (worth £4,500).
- 150 student memberships of Tortoise (worth £1,800).
- Your name, and that of the school/university, printed at the front of each book as a special “thank you”.
- Two Founding Memberships of Tortoise, including the Tortoise Quarterly in print and tickets to ThinkIns (worth £500).
- Two VIP tickets to our launch event on June 12th to 14th June 2020 at Kirtlington Park in Oxfordshire, including entry to the VIP meet-and-greet with a selection of the authors (worth £250).
- A bespoke ThinkIn with the students and teachers at the chosen school or university for the first two to pledge. Travel outside of London not included.
- Limited to 2.

Frequently Asked Questions
How long will it take for my book to get dispatched?
Where can I get my book delivered to?
If I buy an ebook, when will I receive this?
Where can I buy a copy if there's none available through the Unbound website?
Where and who do we want to be?
How might we get there?
What might happen if we stay on our current course?
Each short book in the FUTURES series presents a beautifully-written original future vision by an accomplished writer and/or subject expert. Read individually, these books will inform, entertain and challenge. Collectively, they will inspire readers to imagine what might lie ahead, to figure out how they might like the future to look, and think about how, collectively, we might make the transition from here to there.
The first five FUTURES
The Future of Serious Art by Bidisha
Bidisha is a broadcaster, writer and film maker.
The digital revolution has brought all of TV, cinema, shopping and music, not to mention porn, literally into the palm of our hands. It’s easier than ever to bring stories to life, but what happens when artistic work is rebranded "content creation"? Where does this leave literary novelists and arthouse filmmakers? What about those auteur-directors who make mainstream but beautiful, thoughtful films for the big screen?
Bidisha will use her personal journey through novels, TV and film to mirror the changes that have happened in pop culture, cultural theory and the industry. As a storyteller, and a woman of colour who isn't a millennial, she’ll ask who is taken seriously as an artist, what is taken seriously as art now and how might that change over the next century?
The Future of British Politics by Frankie Boyle
Frankie Boyle is a comedian and writer.
He says, “To be honest, I have absolutely no idea what the future of British politics will look like. But things should be clearer when I start work in January, possibly in some kind of re-education camp. I’ll be looking at some of the forces that will be key in the coming years, from post colonial entitlement to looming climate catastrophe and drawing what I can only assume will be some fairly negative conclusions.”
The Future of Men by Grace Campbell
Grace Campbell is a 25-year-old comedian, writer, filmmaker and activist.
She was born in a political environment that suggested only aggressive, dominant men – like her father, Alistair Campbell – were allowed power. Seeing this, she decided that if she wanted to be powerful she had to be like him - a decision which baffled the boys she grew up with.
Being a woman, Grace is well qualified to write this essay. After all, men have been writing about the future of women since words came into existence. Now, Grace returns the favour. Her start point is this: men who thrive off women loathing them will eventually go extinct. Hurrah. She’ll use her own experience, research and interviews to explain how.
She says, “Men do the world the most harm, and yet still have most of the power. I am looking forward to thinking about what men’s relevance will be in the future. I’m sure what I write will piss some people off, and I’m happy about that.”
The Future of Stuff by Vinay Gupta
Vinay Gupta is CEO of Mattereum, a company that authenticates, indexes and catalogues things on the blockchain. He has a background in designing innovative equipment and systems for refugee camps, including the famous “hexayurt”.
What kind of world will we live in when every item of property has a digital trace? When nothing can be lost and everything has a story? Will property and ownership become as fluid as film is today: summoned on demand, dismissed with a swipe? What will this mean for how we buy, rent, share and dispose of stuff? About what our stuff says about us? And how will this impact on us, on manufacturing and supply, and on the planet?
The Future of Seduction by Mia Levitin
Mia Levitin is a freelance cultural and literary critic. Her work appears regularly in publications including the Financial Times, The Spectator and the Guardian. She is a graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and previously had a career in mergers and acquisitions.
"We inhabit a culture drenched in dismay, distrust and dystopian fear. There is always a role for realism - but, in 2020, it is definitely time for a corrective, and an intellectual approach that embraces the rich possibilities, multiple challenges and mesmerising innovations that will shape the 21st Century. FUTURES has been founded in precisely that spirit - to commission the best and the brightest writers, representative of modern society, to map out the potentialities and perils of this new world, each in their own distinctive, personal and striking way. Collectively, these essays will combine the wisdom of the ages with the shock of the new. They will be constructive, provocative and indispensable."
Matt d'Ancona, FUTURES Series Editor
The story behind FUTURES
In the immediate aftermath of WW1, a series of small books made a big impression. In an extraordinary series called To-Day and To-Morrow, published over 8 years from 1923, over 100 established and emerging authors, philosophers, scientists and others laid out a vision for the future. From the future of science to the future of swearing, their ingenuity, penmanship, humour and optimism produced a unique and important body of work that has proven to be, in turns, spectacularly accurate and wonderfully wrong. Collectively they envisioned ideas that must have seemed perverse at the time, glimpsing things we now take for granted, including IVF and maternity leave, mobile phones and video games, wind power and the internet. The opening book of the series by J.B.S Haldane inspired elements of his friend Aldous Huxley’s famous futuristic novel Brave New World. Contributors - Sylvia Pankhurst, Robert Graves, Vera Brittain and Bertrand Russell among them - were some of the most important voices their time.
FUTURES reboots this series for today.
We believe the public discourse about our collective future needs urgent revision. The gap between the powerful and the powerless is widening. Many of us feel locked out. Alarmed by the lack of vision, hungry for leadership - in business, politics, technology, culture and society. To be blindly optimistic is irresponsible, but without optimism we have no hope.
At the heart of FUTURES is the belief that the future is unknowable and it is ours to make. To make it, we must first conceive of it and then describe it. It will be comprised entirely new work commissioned especially for FUTURES. It will not be a manifesto. It will not be a prediction or a forecast. It will be an exercise in constructive optimism. Together, FUTURES will take the time to think through a series of alternative futures that are possible but not inevitable. It will make the case for them and point a way forward that we can believe in if we choose to.
Book specification
- Paperback
- Fat A-format size: 121 x 178mm
- Each essay is roughly 12,000 words
- The essays are printed separately.
- Subject to funding, the first five titles will be sent to subscribers in June 2020.
Quick select rewards
Futures collection
PLUS:
- All five books.
- Your name printed in the back of each book.

Signed Edition
PLUS:
- All five books, signed by the authors.
- Your name printed in the back of each book.

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The FUTURES team
Dr Lisa Gee – RESEARCH FELLOW IN FUTURE THINKING, University of Birmingham. PROJECT LEAD
Prof Max Saunders – INTERDISCIPLINARY PROFESSOR OF MODERN LITERATURE & CULTURE, University of Birmingham. SERIES EDITOR
Prof Don Paterson – PROFESSOR OF POETRY, University of St Andrews. SERIES CO-EDITOR
Fiona Lensvelt – NEW PROJECTS EDITOR, Unbound.
Annabel Shepherd-Barron PROJECT LEAD, Tortoise.
Matthew d’Ancona – EDITOR & PARTNER, Tortoise. EDITORIAL LEADTortoise is a new media organisation set up by James Harding (former Director of BBC News), Katie Vanneck-Smith (former President of the Wall St Journal) and Matthew Barzun (US Ambassador to the UK under President Obama).
Tortoise is on a mission to slow down and open up journalism: they don’t do breaking news, but what’s driving the news. Not the news as it happens, but when it’s ready. They take the time to see the fuller picture, to make sense of the forces shaping our future, to investigate what’s unseen.
They focus on the Big Five forces that are shaping our lives: Our Planet, Belonging, New Things, Wealth and the 100-Year-Life, and are built with and for their members, who actively contribute to the stories they write at live, unscripted discussions called “ThinkIns”. ThinkIns are the heart of Tortoise and take place almost every weekday – in their newsroom and across the UK, enabling Tortoise’s top-flight team of journalists to harness the diverse experience and expertise of members to shape the way they write about the world.
- 6th August 2020 An update on the FUTURES series
Dear readers
We hope you’re safe and well, and that you have enough stimulating reading material to keep you going through these difficult times.
We’re writing to update you on progress towards publishing the FUTURES essays. We originally planned to launch them earlier this year at KITE, Tortoise’s first ever festival of music and ideas. You won’t be surprised to learn that Covid-19…
19th March 2020 Fully Funded FUTURES!A small ray of light in these difficult times.
FUTURES is 100% funded, the manuscripts are coming in, and people can now pledge for the the digital edition, at a bargain £15 for all five essays. Please share the link with anyone you know who might be interested. https://unbound.com/books/futures
As a thank you… and to entice you to encourage a friend (or three) to buy, here’s a selection of…
19th January 2020 To-Day & To-Morrow. The inspiration for FUTURESThis week, Professor Max Saunders reveals the history behind the FUTURES essays.
To-Day and To-Morrow – tech, sex & swearing in the 1920s
Almost a century ago a young geneticist, J. B. S. Haldane, made a series of startling predictions in an essay called Daedalus; or, Science and the Future. Genetic modification. Wind power. The gestation of children in artificial wombs – “ectogenesis…
3rd January 2020 Unique FUTURES pledge offerHappy New Year – and huge thanks, as ever, for your support.
This week’s update focuses on Vinay Gupta, the author of The Future of Stuff.
Vinay helped to design Dubai’s National Blockchain Strategy, was the release coordinator for the Ethereum blockchain, and is now CEO of Mattereum, the company organizing the world's property and making it universally accessible and useful.
He has contributed…
27th December 2019 Almost 40% funded… & some fabulous limited pledge offersI hope you're enjoying a peaceful/lively/relaxing (delete as applicable) festive break.
As I write, FUTURES is heading for the 40% mark. Huge thanks for your pledges and for sharing the link with your friends, family and broader network. We’re getting there, but still need your help!
Every pledge, every share on social media gets us closer to our target. So please keep posting, tweeting and…
20th December 2019 Exclusive Christmas pressie for art lovers!Hi everyone
Firstly, a huge thank you to all of you for supporting FUTURES so far. We've now reached 1/3rd of our target but we really need you to keep spreading the word with colleagues, friends, family – anyone looking for last minute Christmas presents – to make this project happen.
*New pledge alert*
This week, we have a new limited edition pledge from Bidisha – broadcaster, filmmaker…
13th December 2019 30% funded, new pledge levels and a Q&A with Grace CampbellWelcome to our second FUTURES update.
Thanks to all of you, we've now reached 30% of our target and have sold out of our Editor's Annotated Editions pledges. We're making good progress but we're going to need your help to make FUTURES happen so please keep sharing with friends.
*New pledge alert*
This week, we have two new pledges from Grace Campbell - comedian, activist and author-to-be…
6th December 2019 The first FUTURES update – Mystic Matt speaksWelcome to the first FUTURES update from me, Lisa Gee, FUTURES programme director. We’ll be updating you weekly, usually on a Friday. Although, as other days are available, we may surprise you by casually posting something on one of them.
Huge thanks to all those of you who’ve already pledged. We're already coming up to 20% of our target, but we really need you to spread the word to make FUTURES…
These people are helping to fund FUTURES.
Nathan Taylor
Jude Henderson
Victoria Stobo
Armande Ang Houle
Stuart Hill
Judith Richardson
Bil McCafferty
Steven Paggioli
Marco Maranzana
An anonymous donor
Daniel Mueller
Giancarlo Antonucci
Andrew O'Marah
Matt Phillips
Max Benoiton
Jason Cumming
Jonathan Lloyd
Jared Shurin
Laurie Baker
Simon Stubbs
Ian Kenny
Steve Taylor
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