Reading list for the Future party · November 2026

Book Projection 2050

Eighteen books about the world around 2050: forecasts from institutions, solutions tested on models, and novels that scientists and policymakers take seriously. Each one comes with why the author is worth trusting, the idea it offers for 2050 and what has already come true. Those ideas, plus verified quotes taken word for word from the books, make up a projection for the wall.

F for fullscreen
1964 · Summa Technologiaespines by year of publication2024 · The Singularity Is Nearer

Answer

Six books where 2050 is both plausible and inspiring

    If you read one

    The Future We Choose

    The only book in the list that describes 2050 directly, in two versions: a world that has warmed by 3 °C, and a world where the Paris Agreement was kept. It was written by Christiana Figueres, who led the UN climate convention while the Paris Agreement was being prepared. Book card

    Most inspiring, if less rigorous

    How it was scored. Authority: who the author is, which institutions and models they draw on, what awards they won and how their earlier forecasts held up. Plausibility: whether the forecast rests on models and technologies that already exist, and whether it matches 2026 data. Inspiration: whether the book offers an image of 2050 you would want on the wall. All three are editorial scores out of 10. A book joins the core when it scores at least 8 on both plausibility and inspiration.

    Why these books are worth trusting

    Six facts about how books guess the future

    71%

    The share of electricity that solar and wind supply in 2050 on the International Energy Agency’s path to net zero. In 2022 it was 12%. It is the same picture Drawdown and The Future We Choose paint.

    IEA, Net Zero Roadmap, 2023 · iea.org
    1972

    The year The Limits to Growth came out. In 2020 its model was checked against 50 years of real data: the world tracks closest to two of its scenarios, BAU2 and Comprehensive Technology.

    Herrington, Journal of Industrial Ecology · Live Science
    8.1 vs 10.3

    Billion people at the peak. In 2012 Randers expected 8.1 billion around 2040; in 2024 the UN expects 10.3 billion in the mid-2080s. The forecasts agree there will be a peak and differ on its timing by 40 years.

    The Conversation · UN, WPP 2024
    119 Gt

    Of CO₂ that educating girls and family planning could save together by 2050. That is more than any single solution in Drawdown’s 2017 ranking, first place included.

    Singularity Hub, 2017
    38

    Events Kim Stanley Robinson spoke at during the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow. The summit’s climate champion Nigel Topping invited him after reading The Ministry for the Future.

    Boston University, 2024
    86% vs 7%

    Kurzweil’s forecasting accuracy as scored by Kurzweil himself and by the independent reviewer Dan Luu. That is why authority here is scored from outside checks only.

    danluu.com · Singularity Hub, 2011

    Map of the list

    Plausibility versus inspiration

    The top right is the core. The top left holds the dream books; the bottom right holds sober forecasts and warnings. Hover a dot for details, or click it to jump to its card.

    Core: both scores 8 or higherRest of the list

    The list

    Eighteen books, core first

    Cards are sorted by plausibility plus inspiration. The strip on top is the book’s palette, and its slides in the projection glow in the same color.

    Ideas for 2050

    Twenty-five ideas from the books, and what exists today

    Each row is one projection slide. Idea slides paraphrase the books; the verbatim quotes are in the next section. Status is as of November 2026. The button in a row starts the projection from that slide.

    Idea for 2050FromWhat exists nowSlide

    Quotes for the wall

    Words from the books, checked against the text

    Every quote here was found in the book’s own text, or in at least two independent sources that give the same wording. The badge says which. Lines from interviews and articles were left out, even famous ones. Click a quote to start the projection from it.

    Wall projection

    Ideas and quotes that play on their own

    Each slide holds for 8 to 17 seconds, timed by word count so people can read it from across the room. Idea slides come in four blocks; quote slides use a book serif. Headlines enter in different ways and the background glows in the book’s color. After the last slide the projection starts over.

    Show
    Pace
    Space
    pause and resume
    ← →
    previous and next slide; clicking a slide also moves forward
    F
    fullscreen
    Esc
    leave the projection
    How to startOpen the page on the laptop connected to the projector, press Play the quotes or Start the projection, then F. Add #quote-wall, #projection or #mix-wall to the page link to open the quotes, the ideas or both straight away.
    With the filmsTwo walls: films from Projection 2050 on one, books on the other. Or one wall, with a book block as a bright pause between film blocks, for example Us and the machines after Ex Machina and After Yang.
    Light and soundThe slides are dark with large white text, so they read even with the lights on. They need no sound of their own; play the party soundtrack from the 2050 soundtrack page.
    Books on the tablePut paper copies of the core six next to the wall. Guests will recognise them on the slides.

    Not books, but the backbone

    Reports the books were checked against

    DocumentWhoWhat it says about mid-century
    Net Zero Roadmap2021, updated 2023International Energy AgencyOn the path to net zero, solar and wind supply 71% of electricity in 2050, and all renewables 89%. iea.org
    World Population Prospects2024UN Population DivisionPopulation grows from 8.2 billion in 2024 to a peak of about 10.3 billion in the mid-2080s. un.org
    Global Trends 20402021US National Intelligence CouncilFive scenarios: Renaissance of Democracies, A World Adrift, Competitive Coexistence, Separate Silos, Tragedy and Mobilization. The authors say they are “not intended to be predictions but to widen the aperture as to the possibilities.” dni.gov, PDF
    Update to Limits to Growth2020Gaya Herrington, Journal of Industrial EcologyFifty years of data sit closest to the BAU2 and Comprehensive Technology scenarios; in both, growth slows within about a decade. Live Science

    Sources

    Where the facts come from

    Not verified

    Where this could be wrong

    • The authority, plausibility and inspiration scores are editorial judgments against the criteria in the Answer block. They are not a survey or a rating.
    • Idea slides paraphrase the books. Quote slides are verbatim, and each quote card says how it was checked and links its sources. Page numbers differ between editions, so the cards name chapters where known.
    • Lem is quoted in Joanna Zylinska’s 2013 English translation. Porritt, Randers and Smith quotes were checked against library scans of the books, which few web pages quote. Two A City on Mars quotes were matched to a reader’s ebook highlight and an unofficial copy; check them against a bought copy before printing anything.
    • Clarke’s Profiles of the Future and Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot are not in the eighteen. They are added to the quotes because their lines suit the wall, and Sagan’s text is the narration of the short film Wanderers on the film page.
    • Russian editions were confirmed by shop or review pages for seven books. Summa Technologiae, Klara and the Sun, The Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update and Ted Chiang’s collection Exhalation are listed from memory. No translation turned up for the other seven, which does not mean none exists.
    • The figures from Megachange (9.3 billion people, the GDP shares) come from reviews, not from the book’s text.
    • The AI 2041 stories about AI companions for children and the world of plenty are retold from memory; the reviews confirm only the book’s overall format.
    • The Drawdown ranking is from the 2017 edition. Project Drawdown has since recalculated its estimates, and solutions may have changed places.
    • Facts in the “What exists now” column (electric car sales, Casgevy, Neuralink, Arctic warming and others) come from well-known sources linked in each row, but not all of them were re-checked for this page.
    • Kurzweil’s accuracy was measured on different lists with different methods, so 86% and 7% are not directly comparable.

    Close, but left out

    • Megatech: Technology in 2050 (The Economist, 2017): the sequel to Megachange; many of its chapters describe today’s trends rather than 2050.
    • The World in 2050 by Hamish McRae (2022): a recent, optimistic survey of long-run forces, but we found no outside checks of it.
    • Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari (2016): the most-read book about the future, and more philosophy than testable forecast.
    • How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates (2021): a good engineering plan whose ideas already appear in Drawdown and in Figueres.