Predicting what the world is going to be like in 25 years
has a lot more to do with science fiction than science. So
we figured, who better to help us visualize this special,
flip issue of the future than Bruce Sterling? He wrote such
classic novels as Heavy Weather and Islands in the Net, as
well as the recently published Zeitgeist. Sterling is one of
the founding fathers of the cyberpunk movement, a literary
trend that reinvigorated science-fiction writing in the mid-
1980s.
Our idea for this special section was simple: instead of
collecting the usual essays from futurists about how life
will be 25 years from now, we wanted to take our readers
there, as if it really were January 2026. We also turned
this vision into a first-of-its kind broadband magazine.
(Come to timedigital.com for details.) Sterling, who is
working on a nonfiction book about future life, was only
too happy to be the guest editor for the project: "Time
Digital is a friendly, unpretentious, approachable magazine
that would completely shatter people's grip on reality if a
time traveler took it back to 1975," he says.
Over a period of months, Sterling solicited ideas from an
Internet mailing list for futurists he runs called the Viridian List. (Viridian is a shade of green as well as the name of
his environmental and design movement.) With half a
dozen contributors from the list, Sterling concocted a
package of features, reviews and smaller items that, when
taken together, create a world very different from our
own — and yet, very similar. It is a place in which people
are generally prosperous, the environment is the burning
issue and the opposite of many of the things we feared in
2001 has come to pass. Welcome to Sterling's world.s and
smaller items that, when taken together, create a world
very different from our own — and yet, very similar. It is a
place in which people are generally prosperous, the
environment is the burning issue and the opposite of many
of the things we feared in 2001 has come to pass.
Welcome to Sterling's world.
