FUTURES by Tortoise

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 Antiquity by Sir Richard Lambert

Sir Richard Lambert is chair of the Board at the British Museum, former editor of the Financial Times and chair of Tortoise Media’s editorial board. He’s also served as Director-General of the CBI and Chancellor of the University of Warwick. 

"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 FUTURES project is brought to you by Tortoise, a new slow media platform, in partnership with Dr Lisa Gee, Professor Max Saunders and Professor Don Paterson.

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.