I have seen the future and it is meh.

Inspired by a podcast by Rose Eveleth (which I have not heard or even heard of previously), this anthology of speculative fiction presents a dozen short comics by fourteen artists about some possible future, each followed by a four- to six-page text essay by Eveleth with her take on the subject.

It is so long and so slow and so dull it took me a month to wade through it. ( )

This interesting anthology project has different comics artist create a short story (around 20 pages) tackling an aspect of a one of 12 possible futures. Each is then followed by an essay by futurist Eveleth discussing the possibility, and probability, of the scenario.

Covering a wide variety of topics from smart cities, to art created by AI, how a legal system would work in space, to underwater living, big pharma, and pop-star avatars it’s wide ranging, informative, and thought provoking. ( )

My review of this book can be found on my YouTube Vlog at:

https://youtu.be/nUX-2qEJpYk

Enjoy! ( )

Flash Forward: An Illustrated Guide to Possible (and Not So Possible) Tomorrows from Rose Eveleth and many others is an up and down experience, some wonderful stories and some, well, essays.

The review copy I had is in black and white and, I am assuming, lower quality, so that certainly made reading the book a different experience than someone getting the finished copy. The sample color pages I saw on Edelweiss looked good, so appearances shouldn't be an issue when released. Unfortunately, in the digital review copy, not only was it black and white but many (as in the vast majority) of the pages were fuzzy and required slow reading and guessing some words from context. Again, not likely an issue with the finished product but disrupted any flow the stories might have had.

That said, the stories were very interesting and thought-provoking. Without question they were the highlights of the book. The essays, well, hopefully an editor will get hold of it before publication. Repetition is the least of the issues. They reminded me of a person I knew in college, always stating and restating the obvious, quoting anyone and everyone whether directly pertinent or just happens to have a word in common. We called that person the "mastermind of the obvious." A few paragraphs after each story to highlight what each story touched on would have been fine. But most readers, I would hope, understood the main points being made, so stating things that most well read people know just makes this reader think you meant this book for a remedial group that never reads or keeps up on current events. By the third essay I was skimming them because they only annoyed me. But I guess to get one's name as the "author" of a book of other people's stories one has to put in a lot of fluff.

While I will still recommend this, it will be for the stories, well, maybe some elementary students might get something from the essays as well, but they probably don't represent the targeted demographic, so...

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. ( )