OK so this is not a serious thank you! It does however fit into a rather tongue in cheek promo video for Future Rising: A Journey from the Past to the Edge of Tomorrow that I’ve just published on the Risk Bites YouTube channel:
The bottom line is that if you don’t care about the future, this is not a book for you 🙂
It’s still a couple of months before Future Rising hits the streets, but … drumroll … I’ve just received my author copies of the book!
As anyone who’s had their book published knows, that initial unboxing and the moment you see for the first time what your book looks and feels like is a mix of excitement and dread. Will you love your book, or will you hate it? And will the first thing you see be that error that slipped between multiple editorial cracks?
Thankfully, the print version of Future Rising looks fantastic! This is an eminently pocketable and browsable book; it’s a book you can carry around and dip into, or just as easily spend a couple of hours burying yourself in.
I’m now more excited than ever for its release on October!
And just for posterity, here’s the unboxing video — which, bizarrely was banned by YouTube:
When I started writing my forthcoming book Future Rise, the intent was publish it today, April 22 2020 — the fiftieth anniversary of Earth Day.
Sadly, publishing timelines and coronavirus ended up scuppering this plan, and the publication date has been pushed back. Yet despite this, the book remains deeply influenced by, and relevant to, our relationship with the planet we live on, and the future we’re building with it.
And so, to mark this year’s Earth Day, I’m posting the book’s introduction and the first chapter, in recognition of our relationship with the future, and our increasingly important responsibility to it.
It’s great to see the Kindle version of Future Rising available for pre-order on Amazon – one thing I love about working with Mango is their commitment to making their authors’ work available on different platforms.
The Kindle version is available for pre-order here: https://www.amazon.com/Future-Rising-Journey-Past-Tomorrow-ebook/dp/B084LNT72W/
This week’s big news is that I will be speaking at this year’s TEDxASU – which just keeps on getting bigger and better!
More details to come over the next few weeks, but the event is being held on April 4, the theme this year is Flux, tickets go on sale on February 13, and the full lineup of speakers can be found on the TEDxASU website!
Oh, and my talk? I’ll be talking about the future as an object …
Having recorded a number of excerpts from my upcoming book Future Rising for for a potential blurb writer, I thought it might be interesting to post them here.
I won’t be recording the audiobook when it comes out, and as you can tell from these, I’m not a great voice actor. But the recording below does give a nice overview of the book, and where it takes the reader.
Feel free to download this — and if you enjoy it, please share it with others. And a reminder that the book is out on June 16, but can be pre-ordered now!
Also, if you’re interested, here’s the full content outline for the book, and the time points for the sections in the audio clip above:
| SECTION | TIME |
| FOREWORD | |
| INTRODUCTION | 00:00 |
| PART 1 – A JOURNEY INTO THE PAST | 04:53 |
| 1. EARTHRISE | 05:07 |
| 2. ORIGINS | 08:31 |
| 3. LIGHT | |
| 4. MOVEMENT | |
| 5. TIME | |
| 6. ENTROPY | |
| 7. EMERGENCE | |
| 8. EVOLUTION | 11:29 |
| 9. ANTICIPATION | |
| 10. INSTINCT | |
| 11. CAUSALITY | |
| 12. MEMORY | |
| 13. LEARNING | |
| 14. INTENTIONALITY | |
| 15. INTELLIGENCE | |
| 16. KNOWLEDGE | |
| 17. REASON | 14:18 |
| PART II – UNIQUELY HUMAN | 17:33 |
| 18. FEELINGS | 17:43 |
| 19. FAITH | 21:03 |
| 20. IMAGINATION | 25:37 |
| 21. CURIOSITY | |
| 22. CREATIVITY | |
| 23. ART | |
| 24. FEAR | 28:34 |
| 25. LOSS | |
| 26. DESPAIR | |
| 27. POSSIBILITY | |
| 28. HOPE | 32:08 |
| 29. STORIES | |
| 30. INVENTION | |
| 31. INNOVATION | |
| 32. DESIGN | |
| PART III – BUILDING THE FUTURE | |
| 33. TRANSFORMATION | |
| 34. ACCELERATION | |
| 35. TRANSCENDENCE | |
| 36. SINGULARITY | |
| 37. SIMULATION | |
| 38. HACK | |
| 39. COMPLEXITY | |
| 40. HUBRIS | 35:07 |
| 41. DELUSION | |
| 42. PERCEPTION | |
| 43. DECEPTION | |
| 44. THREAT | |
| 45. BLINDSIDE | |
| 46. CHANGE | |
| PART IV – THE EDGE OF TOMORROW | |
| 47. RESTRAINT | |
| 48. BOUNDARIES | |
| 49. CATACLYSM | |
| 50. OUTWARD | |
| 51. LIFE | |
| 52. RE-CREATION | |
| 53. HUMANITY | 39:07 |
| 54. MEANING | |
| 55. MORALITY | |
| 56. ETHICS | |
| 57. EMPATHY | |
| 58. RESPONSIBILITY | |
| 59. STEWARDSHIP | 43:58 |
| 60. FUTURERISE | 47:18 |
| AFTERWORD |
Here’s a novel challenge: I’m finalizing the blurbs–those “this is an awesome book: you should read it!” quotes you get on the back cover of books–for Future Rising, and I’ve just been told “sure” by a writer I really admire … “but you’ll need to send me an audiobook version to listen to” (there is a legit reason for this).
Of course, I don’t have an audiobook version yet – that won’t be out until the book launches. But I’m so excited by the possibility of getting this person’s endorsement that I’m about to spend the weekend recording the equivalent of a draft audiobook.
This is, of course, a stir-crazy idea, and definitely not one that any sane person would even contemplate.
I’ll let you know how it goes!
This morning I received the final version of the foreword to my upcoming book Future Rising, and I love how this frames the book, and sets the tone for what’s to come — can’t wait until others get the chance to read it!
The foreword is written by my good friend and NASA astronaut Cady Coleman. Here’s a taster to wet your appetite:
Andrew opens his book with the famous Earthrise photo, taken in 1968, an image that had a profound impact. As an astronaut who has flown in space twice on the shuttle and lived on the International Space Station, I was privileged to see our earth from space every day for almost 6 months. That perspective is startling.
The earth from space does not look fragile – the rock itself will survive long after we do. But there is a sense of our vulnerability, made palpable on my mission when we viewed the aftermath of the 2011 tsunami in Japan, only days after working with Japanese colleagues on the ground to berth their supply ship to the space station. It was comforting for us as a crew to be able to gather data about the flooding to send back to earth. We also folded origami white cranes and sent video of them floating in space, which played on billboards during the rebuilding to represent hope for the Japanese people.
From that vantage point, it is also clear that all of us come from one place. One planet. One home. We are the crew of Spaceship Earth and it falls to us to find a way to continue to thrive on our precious and beautiful planet. From space, it is clear that there are no borders, and nothing to stop us from being the best of collaborators, to form the best teams, to collectively bring our imaginations to bear to solve the critical problems of our times.
Just over four months to go until publication day!