Illustrations by Lisa Larson Walker, Franco Zacharzewski, Natalie Matthews-Ramo, and Sarula Bao.

Future Tense started experimenting with publishing science fiction in 2016 and 2017, but we really invested in it in 2018, publishing one story each month. That year was capped off by Annalee Newitzs quirky and urgent When Robot and Crow Saved East St. Louis, which won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for the best short science fiction of the year. Our hope was that these glimpses into possible futures could provide a thought-provoking parallel to our coverage of emerging technology, policy, and society today, inviting us to imagine how the decisions were making today might shape the way we live tomorrow, illuminating key decision points and issues that we might not be giving enough attention.

In 2019, buoyed by the enthusiastic reactions of our readers, we published 12 stories by a diverse array of talented authors. Every story is paired with a response essay by an expert who provides additional context and delves into themes and challenges raised by the fictionand each story comes with arresting original illustrations in a plethora of styles, from bracing realism to mind-bending abstraction and surrealism. Each quarter is organized around a broad theme, giving us the chance to create a dialogue among the pieces and underlining our conviction that the future is a spectrum of possibilities, shaped by our collective decisionsnot a fait accompli or a foregone conclusion.

This October, we celebrated another milestone, publishing our first anthology, Future Tense Fiction: Stories of Tomorrow, with Unnamed Press. The book, which collects our short stories from 2016 through 2018, received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus. We launched the anthology with scintillating public conversations with fiction authors, experts, and others in Washington, San Francisco, New York, and Phoenix.

Were more convinced than ever of the power of science fiction to expand our sense of empathy for people whose identities and day-to-day experiences are vastly different from our owneven beyond the bounds of what we currently consider human. This year, many of our authors grappled with issues of difference, exclusion, and inequality; with bullying and abusive behavior, from the schoolyard to the space station; with the dangers of alienation in digital spaces, and the opacity of technologies designed solely for profit; and with radical possibility and hope, from giant nutritious plants grown in space to entirely new forms of music and self-expression enabled by technological change. In a moment where the future seems impossibly turbulent, leaving us feeling powerless, science fiction can help us get our heads around the complexity, reminding us of the human minds, relationships, and problems buried under branding, hype, and jargon.

Future Tense Fiction will continue in 2020, with a new story, essay, and illustration each month. The first theme of the year (we couldnt resist): politics.

You can find all of our stories on the Future Tense Fiction landing page, and sign up for the Future Tense newsletter to get notified whenever we publish something new. (Its been on hiatus for a little while, but it will be back in 2020.) And dont forget to follow Future Tense on Twitter.

Thoughts and Prayers, by Ken Liu: A family grieving in the wake of a mass shooting finds themselves in a maelstrom of abusive, inescapable trolling powered by cutting-edge artificial intelligence.

Response essay: Whats in It for the Trolls? by digital culture researcher Adrienne Massanari

Mpendulo: The Answer, by Nosipho Dumisa: Two genetically modified young people navigate bullying and prejudice, and discover the secrets locked inside their DNA, in a world wracked by anxiety after a pandemic.

Response essay: Why Are We So Afraid of Each New Advance in Reproductive Technology? by journalist Sarah Elizabeth Richards, who often reports on reproductive technology and genomics

The Arisen, by Louisa Hall: A fairy tale from a future where truth-checkers, an elite caste implanted with chips that suppress emotion, are charged with sorting official fact from distortion and fiction.

Response essay: What Are Facts Without Fiction? by librarian Jim ODonnell

The Song Between Worlds, by Indrapramit Das: An overprivileged teen dragged to Mars on a family vacation stumbles beyond the cushy confines of their resort and encounters an entirely new form of musical performance.

Response essay: What Would Sound Be Like on Mars? by astronomer Lucianne Walkowicz

No Moon and Flat Calm, by Elizabeth Bear: A team of safety engineering students in a spacefaring future are plunged into a real disaster.

Response essay: How Will People Behave in Deep Space Disasters? by disaster journalist Amanda Ripley

Space Leek, by Chen Qiufan: An astrobotanist for the China National Space Administration, assigned to a distant space station, contends with stifling family expectations while researching how to successfully grow food off-worldand deals with a sudden, deadly crisis.

Response essay: What Will Humans Really Need in Space? by architecture professor Fred Scharmen

Zero in Babel, by E. Lily Yu: In a world where on-demand and even DIY genetic modification is commonplace, a young woman struggles to keep up with the punishing cycle of high school trends.

Response essay: The Future Will Grind On, by law professor Diana M. Bowman

What the Dead Man Said, by Chinelo Onwualu: A woman returns to her hometown in Nigeria after her fathers death, opening old wounds, in a future entirely reshaped by migration and climate chaos.

Response essay: The Scars of Being Uprooted, by journalist Valeria Fernndez, who frequently covers immigration

Double Spiral, by Marcy Kelly: An at-home DNA testing company turns to targeted advertising after a privacy scandal and a spate of new regulations, and a researcher at the firm uncovers a shattering conspiracy.

Response essay: Crossing the Germline, by bioethicist Josephine Johnston

Affordances by Cory Doctorow: People from all walks of lifefrom migrants and hapless teens to tech CEOsfind themselves in the clutches of terrible algorithms and search for ways to evade, confound, and even reclaim these technologies of oppression.

Response essay: Not Just a Number, by artist and educator Nettrice Gaskins

A Priest, a Rabbi, and a Robot Walk Into a Bar, by Andrew Dana Hudson: A rabbinical school dropout and a seminary dropout start a company that trains algorithms to be sensitive to issues of faith and beliefand find themselves in an escalating series of ethical conundrums.

Response essay: A.I. Could Bring a Sea Change in How People Experience Religious Faith, by Slates Ruth Graham, who often writes about religion

Actually Naneen, by Malka Older: In a future where artificially intelligent nannies are the norm for the wealthy, a mother copes with complicated emotions when her familys nanny becomes buggy and perhaps obsolete.

Response Essay: What Role Should Technology Play in Childhood? by digital humanities professor Ed Finn

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All of the Sci-Fi Stories We Published This Year - Slate

Christmas is behind us and the new year is upon us, there may be some time to find a new read.

So here are a few books I will read, or atleaststart. What attracted me to these books is how they approachthinking about thinking: Each tries to tease out why our general understanding on a subject is so often wrong; they explore better cognitive frameworks that could help us comprehend issues more clearly; they consider unique perspectives in securities trading, national security, genetics and artificial intelligence.

On to the reading:

No. 1. Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert M. Sapolsky.

The professor of biology and neurological sciences at Stanford University (and a MacArthur Fellowship winner in 1987) takes a deep examination into the most basic question of human behaviour: Why do we do the things we do?

He probes the things that influence and determine behaviour: neurology, endocrinology, structural development of the nervous system, culture, ecology and the millions of years of evolution. Why we do what we do turns out to be even more complicated than you might have imagined.

No. 2. The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator by Timothy C. Winegard.

Forget sharks, terrorists or guns: Mosquitoes have killed more people than all other factors in historycombined. Of the 108 billion humans who have ever lived, almost half 52 billion have died from mosquito-borne illnesses. For 190 million years, the mosquito has been waging a war against the rest of the planet, and for all of that history we have been fighting a mostly losing battle.

This has long been one of my very favourite topics; I am thrilled there is finally a book dedicated to it.

No. 3. The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution by Gregory Zuckerman.

This is my nominee for finance book of the year: I read it,reviewedit and interviewed the author forMasters in Business. All thats left is to reread it slowly and deliberately, with no purpose other to enjoy the tale of how one brilliant man saw the markets in a different way from everyone else.

No. 4. Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity by Jamie Metzl.

What will happen to children, lifespans, the plant and the animal world when humans begin to retool the worlds genetic code? Metzl tackles the risks and potential rewards to tinkering with the determinants of life as if theyre just another piece of software.

No. 5. Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do by Jennifer L. Eberhardt.

Investors know that unconscious bias is at work all the time, undermining our goals. What we may not realize is how bias infects our visual perception, attention, memory and actions. The author suggests solutions to managing our biases, but I remain skeptical we can get past our own error-prone nature.

No. 6. Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialised World by David Epstein.

Among top performers, specialization is the exception, not the rule. Thats the startling conclusion of Epstein, a journalist with Sports Illustrated and ProPublica. Considering some of the worlds most successful athletes, artists, inventors, scientists and business people, he found that it was the generalists who excelled, not the specialists.

No. 7. The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War by Ben Macintyre.

What colleagues, institutions and competitors do you trust? How does counterintelligence and disinformation affect how we make decisions? These issues are explored in this nonfiction tale of the three-way Cold War game of espionage between the US, the UK and the Soviet Union.

No. 8. Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino.

Tolentino looks at the basic building blocks of social media and how we use it to deceive not so much others as ourselves. This series of essays tracks among other things the evolution of the internet from a band of enthusiastic geeks and hackers to the trolls and agents of agitprop that have taken over.

No. 9. Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Dont Know by Malcolm Gladwell.

Communication breakdown is the focus in this tour of errors, miscommunication and lies. One of our eras most engaging storytellers, Gladwell roams from Fidel Castro to Bernie Madoff and lots of folks in between. His big premise: the default condition of our species is to assume others tell the truth. This makes all of us vulnerable to the deceptions of politicians, salespeople and con artists.

No. 10. Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence, by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans and Avi Goldfarb.

What happens if we rethinkthe concept of artificial intelligence as a drop in the cost of prediction? That is the question tackled by the three authors of this book, all economists at the University of Torontos Rotman School of Management. The conclusion is that AI, instead of complicating human affairs, may improve decision-making.

2019Bloomberg L.P.

More:
Ten books on thinking about thinking - Moneyweb.co.za

A WILD RIDE. Those, by and large, are the first words that come to mind looking back on Futurisms 2019 and all the news that made up these past twelve months.

We ran thousands of stories this year. They ranged from investigative projects, to interviews, to the building blocks of our site: Sharp hour-by-hour analysis on the science and technology narratives of the day. These stories shaped (and are still shaping) the weird, wonderful, frightening, inspiring, and ever-critical present moment were in, to say nothing of the future well occupy on this planet or elsewhere.

That said: Every once in a while, one of these hundreds of stories exceeds our wildest expectations, drawing hundreds of thousands of readers from across the world, and for weeks at a time, too.

To that end and without further ado, here are The Ten Most-Read Futurism Stories of 2019 along with our best guesses as to why they garnered so much attention, and what it might mean for our future.

10. The First Black Hole Photo Is Even More Amazing When You Zoom Out

When: April 12, 2019

What: After the Event Horizon Telescope team unleashed the first-ever image of a black hole, a separate team dropped an incredible follow-up image of the space around it.

Why: A sense of genuine epochal awe surrounded the release of the historic first image of a black hole, for starters. But when we covered NASAs Chandra X-ray Observatory release of the wider shot, showing how distant galaxy M87s black hole was nestled in a boggling vast cloud of high-energy particles, our readers couldnt stop looking. Heck, neither could we.

9. Our Solar System Is Blanketed in a Giant Wall of Fire

When: Nov. 21, 2019

What: Voyager 2 sent back readings suggesting that the edge of the solar system is surrounded by a bubble of 49,427 degrees Celsius (89,000 degrees Fahrenheit) plasma.

Why: We think of the deep solar system as a dark, frozen expanse, but this story showed that its a frontier of extraordinary unknowns that can apparently get, to put it lightly, hot. Even better, NASAs best tool to plumb its mysteries is Voyager 2 a probe thats been traveling away from the Sun since 1977, giving the story an outrageous old-meets-new finishing coat.

8. NASA Engineer Says New Thruster Could Reach 99% Speed of Light

When: Oct. 14, 2019

What: NASA engineer David Burns said that his new thruster design could reach a ludicrous velocity if you give it enough time to accelerate.

Why: The idea of light-speed travel scratches a sci-fi itch, and Burns has a knack for self-promotion. His thrusters undeniably clever it would use a type of particle accelerator to manipulate the speed of an ion loop, subtly changing their mass through relativity effects, thus generating a gentle thrust without propellant. Give it enough time, according to Burns, and it could reach 99 percent the speed of light. The caveats? Itd require building an enormous device in space, and itd take an extremely long time to speed up.

7. New Research: Human Civilization Will Likely Collapse by 2050

When: June 3, 2019

What: An Australian climate change analysis reached a Mad Max conclusion: Were screwed, and on a clock.

Why: The last year in news has often felt a touch world-ending, no? To say nothing of the worlds ongoing fascination with post-apocalyptic fiction, from Dawn of the Dead to The Hunger Games. The wide interest in this, though, illustrates our looming fear of a real collapse event especially when the research comes from a former fossil fuel exec. The good news, according to the research, is that drastic environmental policies could pull the planet back in the right direction. Also, lets be real: the art for this one, by Futurism writer Victor Tangermann, was haunting and beautiful.

6. NASA Research: Astronauts Are Getting Clots, Bizarre Blood Flow

When: Nov. 14, 2019

What: A NASA research project seemingly showed astronauts suffering from ominous circulatory problems.

Why: Everybody loves a feel-good story about a successful rocket launch or a shiny experiment on the International Space Station. But its difficult to ignore growing evidence that space is a hostile environment for the human body and this study, which examined ultrasounds from astronauts whod spent time on space station, showed signs of clots and bizarre blood flow. Needless to say, more research is needed, but this could be an opening act to the human space travel story narrative of this era.

5. Here Are New Pics of That Weird Substance China Found on the Moon

When: Sept. 19, 2019

What: China baffled the world when it announced that its rover had found a mysterious substance on the Moon. Then it released a photo.

Why: The implication of Chinas original announcement, which described the substance as gel-like, was that the material was deeply baffling. Thats probably why droves of Futurism readers visited to see the picture for themselves and share their thoughts though, underwhelmingly, the consensus among researchers is that the material, rather than a gel, is probably lunar glass that formed during a meteor strike.

4. A Dense Bullet of Something Blasted Holes in the Milky Way

When: May 15, 2019

What: According to research by a Harvard-Smithsonian scientist, a dense bullet of something punched holes in our home galaxy many years ago.

Why: A lot of our most-read stories this year were epic in scope, but this galactic-scale mystery by Futurism writer Dan Robitzski might take the cake. Gaps in the stellar stream suggest that something one culprit could be a chunk of dark matter, a million times the mass of our Sun crudely tampered with the large-scale structure of the Milky Way. Just like our readers, we were obsessed and well be keeping an eye out for followup astrophysical research to share with them.

3. NASA: Four Astronauts Will Stay on the Moon for Two Weeks

When: Oct. 30, 2019

What: NASA dropped tantalizing new details about its upcoming Moon missions, which include sending four astronauts to the lunar surface for 6.5 days.

Why: Our readers have a longstanding interest in NASAs efforts to return to the Moon, so these rare specifics from the inscrutable space agency were irresistible. Whats more, this new info demonstrated the depth of NASAs ambition: the 6.5 day mission, which will be loaded with at least four expeditions on the lunar surface, will be twice as long a Moon visit as any other in human history.

2. Russian Sub That Caught Fire Possibly Sent to Cut Internet Cables

When: July 3, 2019

What: In the aftermath of a Russian submarine fire, rumors emerged in Russian media that the sub was on a mission to cut undersea internet cables.

Why: Remember the tragic fire that killed 14 Russian sailors this year? Observers pointed out that Moscow was unusually cagey about the incident, refusing to say even whether it had been a nuclear sub. And then, in a pair of bombshell reports, two Russian outlets reported that the vessel had been a secretive craft thats long been speculated to have been designed to sabotage undersea internet cables. Much like other Russian drama in recent years, this one never got a satisfying conclusion but it was a rare glimpse into the murky world of deep-sea espionage.

1. Chinese Scientists Cloned Gene-Edited Monkeys With Horrifying Results

When: Jan. 25, 2019

What: Chinese scientists made five clones of a monkey that had been gene-edited to suffer from serious psychological problems.

Why: Our most-read story all year took a dive into the lurid world of genetic engineering. Scientists in China tinkered with the DNA of a macaque monkey, and then cloned the animal five times the first time a gene-edited primate had ever successfully been cloned. But ethically, Futurisms Kristin Houser explained, the experiment was a mess: the macaques genes had been altered to give it depression, anxiety, sleep problems and a schizophrenia-like condition. Researchers say the altered monkeys will be a valuable research tool for developing new therapies. But, at the same time, its a Jeff VanderMeer-esque sign of the grotesque frontiers of CRISPR and, like our readers, we couldnt look away.

Excerpt from:
The Top Ten Most-Read Futurism Stories of 2019 - Futurism

Congress approved $1.4 trillion in new spending last week to avoid another government shutdown over the holidays. Taxpayers are right to be wary whenever Congress pulls out its checkbook. But when it comes to one important line-item, budget hawks should be rooting for more funding, not less.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) serves as Congresss watchdog and plays a critical role in holding the federal government accountable to the American people. In November, the comptroller general issued the annual Performance and Accountability Report for FY2019, which found that GAOs work, yielded a record $214.7 billion in financial benefits a return of about $338 for every dollar invested in GAO.

Congress has provided $630 million in new funding for GAO a $40 million increase. This new spending will help support the comptroller generals efforts to modernize oversight and improve Congresss ability to anticipate and address critical challenges.

Since 2014, GAOs work has produced $340 billion in savings and more than 6,400 improvements in program and operational improvements across the government, according to the comptroller generals February testimony before Congress.

In addition to its traditional auditing work, GAO recently established a science, technology, assessment, and analytics (STAA) team. The STAA team is focused on enhancing Congresss capacity to assess emerging technologies, auditing federal science and technology programs, and using advanced analytics to improve auditing.

Earlier this month, Dr. Timothy M. Persons, GAOs chief scientist and managing director of science, technology assessment, and analytics, testified that, GAO will continue to build its capacity to respond to congressional demand. STAAs current staff level is about one-half of what was outlined in the April 2019 plan submitted to Congress.

Besides saving taxpayers money in the long run, increasing appropriations for the GAO and investing new resources in the STAA team, in particular will improve Congresss ability to tackle the challenges and opportunities posed by modern science and technology, rather than leaving such matters to executive agencies.

For example, the STAA team recently hired a chief data scientist, who is charged with using data analytics to support existing audit capabilities, including for upcoming reviews of improper payments across government agencies. GAO also created a Center for Strategic Foresight in 2018 focused on identifying, monitoring, and analyzing emerging issues facing policymakers.

First, enhancing auditing through advanced analytics will improve Congresss ability to prevent waste, fraud and abuse GAOs bread and butter. But increasing GAOs ability to provide technical services will also strengthen Congresss ability to conduct oversight of the many executive agencies that have jurisdiction over technical matters.

Lacking sufficient technical expertise, Congress has historically tended to defer to executive agencies. This, in turn, leaves Congress ill-equipped to grapple with many of the most pressing issues that confront it, from cybersecurity and weapons development to artificial intelligence and genetic engineering, to name only a few. As a result, Congress becomes a mere rubber stamp... of the administrative branch of government, as one member memorably put it, rather than a coequal branch of government.

Second, improving Congresss technical capability can also help it to anticipate changes in science and technology. Importantly, the STAA team is positioned to provide key support to Congress and federal agencies to address key high-risk areas, such as protecting national security technology.

Enhancing GAOs science and technology capabilities complements the House of Representatives Select Committee on the Modernization of Congresss bipartisan and unanimous recommendation for reestablishing and restructuring an improved Office of Technology Assessment. A well-resourced Government Accountability Office STAA team need notbe a replacement for recreating and modernizing the Office of Technology Assessment, which many members have advocated for. In fact, both STAA and OTA could mutually support the legislative branchs efforts to improve its oversight of the federal government and address the nations science and technology challenges.

It may seem counterintuitive to ask fiscal conservatives to support expanding Congresss capabilities, especially at a time when resources are scarce and the national debt is $23 trillion. But investing in GAO will yield long-term savings and better equip the Constitutions first branch to do its job.

Garrett Johnson is co-founder and executive director of Lincoln Network. M. Anthony Mills is director of science policy at the R Street Institute.

Here is the original post:
Why taxpayers should support expanding the GAO | TheHill - The Hill

A sense of looming catastrophe is reinforced by reports of melting glaciers in the Arctic, unprecedented floods in parts of Asia and disappearing islands in the Pacific because of the rise in sea levels.The classic response of environmental campaigners is to demand a green revolution, based on a radical new economic agenda and drastic changes in our lifestyles.

According to the eco-warriors, the salvation of the planet lies in the replacement of hi-tech western consumerism with a culture of self-sacrifice.

Like the po-faced religious puritans of the past, these hectoring zealots argue that environmental disasters are natures revenge on us for our selfish greed.

Therefore, to avoid the apocalypse, we must atone for our sins by accepting endless green bans, taxes and economic recession.

It is a miserable, authoritarian outlook, perfectly captured in the grim rhetoric of Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, who has become the international champion of the hardline, environmental programme.

In a typically emotive rant at a UN summit last year, Thunberg wailed the politicians had stolen my dreams and my childhood, adding that we are at the beginning of mass extinction and all you talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth.

But there is an alternative vision for the rescue of the planet, one that is far more uplifting and optimistic.

Instead of seeking to drag us back to a spartan, pre-industrial age, it aims to embrace the future.

Rather than viewing technological innovation as a menace, it wants to harness such progress for the good of mankind.

It is an approach that lies behind the new initiative by Prince William, who announced this week the launch of the most prestigious environmental prize in history in the search for practical solutions for the Earths problems.

Under this ten-year-long project, supported by Sir David Attenborough, five winners will each year receive multimillion-pound awards for the development of ideas to tackle climate change.

Reflecting this bold emphasis on advances in science and engineering, the scheme is entitled Earthshot in an echo of the inspirational US Moonshot programme of the 1960s that pioneered the first Moon landings.

By taking the plunge into environmental politics, there was a danger that Prince William might have come across as just another virtue-signalling, woke celebrity, delivering sanctimonious lectures about green awareness from his affluent cocoon of privilege.

But he has been far too thoughtful, and creative to do that.

Instead, he has come up with a plan that could yield real results rather than just spreading guilt.

In contrast to the bleak propaganda of Thunberg and her fellow fundamentalists, his prizes offer the exciting hope of better times ahead.

The Prince himself rightly referred to the inspiring civilisations we have built through our unique power as human beings to innovate and problem-solve.

He is absolutely right.

The answer to climate change lies with the hard-headed pioneers, not shrill activists.

Tremendous progress is already being made, particularly in the generation of green energy.

Yesterday, the National Grid revealed that 2019 was the cleanest year on record, as energy from sources such as wind, solar and nuclear power outstripped that from fossil fuels.

This can be part of a saga of real environmental progress.

Bolstered by the Princes support, technologists will also find new ways of trapping energy through far more effective storage systems such as batteries or laminate coating.

New, greener forms of transport will be developed, such as electric aircraft and hyperloop trains that can travel at over 700mph.

Crop yields can be enhanced by genetic modification, thereby helping to feed the planet more cheaply.

Above all, the advent of fusion power plants which create energy by combining atoms rather than dividing them will transform supplies, since the process is inherently safe and produces zero emissions.

The stance of the eco-mob is unworkable.

Their whole ethos runs counter to mankinds impulse for improvement.

That is why the radical greens are so intolerant.

In a notorious recent outburst for which she had to apologise, Thunberg herself called for world leaders to be put up against the wall.

But Prince Williams scheme is the opposite.

In place of self-loathing, it is a celebration of the best of mankind.

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New technology will save the planet from climate change, says LEO McKINSTRY - Express.co.uk