What Future: The Year's Best Writing on What's Next for People, Technology, and the Planet, edited by Meehan Crist and Rose Eveleth, is a best of the year anthology featuring new writing by and about the scientists, writers, journalists, and philosophers who are proposing the options that lay not just ahead, but beyond us. Focused on in-depth long-form journalism and essays, What Future tackles issues critical to our future: climate change and human migration, feminism and gender politics, digital rights and AI. From the food systems of the future and built-in environments to constantly evolving systems of justice and surveillance, what kind of future do we envision for people and the planet?

The Worst is Yet to Come explores the disturbing possibility that the current crisis of neoliberal capitalism isn't going to spawn an emancipatory renaissance, but a world that is much, much worse. Wealthy CEOs see it. They've been purchasing isolated bunker-retreats in New Zealand for when the shit goes down. Our politicians know it too, and are frantically transforming the liberal state into a militarized machine. Scientists are either uselessly decrying the looming eco-catastrophe or jumping on the opportunity to conduct ever-reckless experiments with the human genome. The animal kingdom is retreating from the scene in terrible silence, preferring the swift demise of the abattoir's bolt-gun than witnessing what is about to happen. Yet some of us are still ignoring the warning signs, choosing instead to remain cheerfully optimistic, believing that society has probably hit rock bottom and the only way is up. This book argues the opposite. What if we haven't hit rock bottom and are on the precipice of something much worse? And what if were too late? But this grim prospect isn't submitted in the name of millennial fatalism or hopeless resignation. On the contrary, if our grandchildren are to survive the implosion of capitalism - for the chances we will are fairly slim - then a realistic picture of the nightmare to come is crucial. Only an unwavering attitude of "revolutionary pessimism" will help us to prepare accordingly. For the apocalypse will almost certainly be disappointing.