Welcome to Futures Book Club

Futures Book Club brings together people working and studying in futures and foresight, adjacent spaces, and futures-curious folk. 

You've come to the right place to get great book recommendations, join reflective discussions, and swap notes with other curious minds.

Do you work or study in the futures and foresight space?

Are you futures-curious and looking for a place to support your learning?

Do you love reading, and want great recommendations on books that will change the way you think about the future?

Then Futures Book Club is the place for you! Every month we feature a small collection of books for you to read along with. Get book recommendations, see others highlights and insights, and get all that sweet accountability that a book club provides.

This large format book club community has members from across the globe. The variety of members builds in flexibility - you can read along every month, or stretch a book over 2 or 3 months. Club discussions are scheduled at varying times to include readers across many timezones.

Futures Book Club is a welcoming, inclusive community that puts progress ahead of perfection. There is a place for you here, no matter where you are in your futures and foresight learning. You are joining a positive, stigma-free environment where you are supported to share your perspective and learn alongside each other.

Futures Book Club is hosted by Amanda Reeves, a university-trained futurist and facilitator based in Melbourne, Australia.

There's nothing like the accountability of a book club and the wisdom of group discussion.

By joining Futures Book Club, you can:

• Make greater progress on that pile of unread books... though I wouldn't be surprised if you discover great reads faster than you can keep up
• Get great new book recommendations from futures folk with a diverse range of backgrounds and interests. We read a broad range of books from futures, foresight, speculative fiction, and adjacent spaces.
• Nerd out with other readers, swapping highlights, insights, and translating learning into practice
• Dip your toe into futures and foresight. There is an incredible range of books in this space that can guide your growing skillset and practice. Joining the Club is a great way to start your learning journey.
• Share your favourite books with others who will appreciate them. Finally, a community of people who are as interested in your nuanced and niche reads as you are!

Can I join any time?

Yep! We have doors open year round, with a new book featured at the start of each month.

Featured books stick around a while - whenever you join, there will be 3 or so featured books you can choose to get involved in.

Do I have to read one book every month?

Nope! One of the joys of a large-scale book club is that each member can participate in whatever way suits them best at that time.

Rather than a traditional book club where you are obliged to read one book per month, this club works more like a choose-your-own-adventure:

• we feature multiple books at any time so you can choose to read what resonates with you - that might be one Featured Book or all of them!
• club discussions are scheduled for 1, 2, and 3 months after the book is first featured - there's no pressure to read a book any faster than what works for your lifestyle.

Some members read one book over a quarter, others read multiple books at once. If your availability to read ebbs and flows in response to demands and shifts in other parts of your life, you can still get value from the club's recommended reads, seeing other people's highlights and insights, and sitting in on a discussion to decide if that book should go on your to-read pile.

Why do you charge for this book club?

When I realised there were far more people keen to be involved than you normally get in your everyday book club, I wanted to explore a model that really enhances the value of being connected with a large community of readers, while still offering the intimacy of small discussions.

To create a space that can support a large number of people, I've had to invest in a community platform (Mighty Networks) that can provide the space and structure we need. I'm charging a small fee (AUD$3/month, less than a cup of coffee) to help cover the cost.

Don't be fooled - you get so much more value than what you'd expect for $3/month! The membership fee has been set low to make this accessible to more people, while covering the cost of the infrastructure that makes the magic happen.

I know times are tough for a lot of folk right now. If you are in need of this community but the price is a barrier, there are a limited number of community-supported places available. Please email [email protected] to apply.

What is the Club currently reading?

We have a unique model where we savour the Book of the Month. Each month a new book will be featured, with discussions scheduled over the course of 3 months.

This means you always have some choice in what you read, without external pressure to read it in a tight timeframe.

Imaginable: How to see the future coming and feel ready for anything

Jane McGonigal

A world-renowned future forecaster and game designer teaches us to envision the future before it arrives—and gives us the tools to help shape the world we want to live in.

The COVID-19 pandemic, one of the most disruptive events in human history, has made it more challenging than ever to feel prepared, hopeful, and equipped to face the future with optimism. How do we map out our lives when it feels impossible to predict what the world will be like next week, let alone next year or next decade? What we need now are strategies to help us recover our confidence and creativity in facing uncertain futures.

In Imaginable, Jane McGonigal draws on the latest scientific research in psychology and neuroscience to show us how to train our minds to think the unthinkable and imagine the unimaginable. She invites us to play with the provocative thought experiments and future simulations she’s designed exclusively for this book, with the goal to:

• build our collective imagination so that we can dive into the future and envision, in surprising detail, what our lives will look like ten years from now
• develop the courage and vision to solve problems creatively
• take actions and make decisions that will help shape the future we desire
• access “urgent optimism,” an unstoppable force within each of us that activates our sense of agency

Imaginable teaches us to be fearless, resilient, and bold in realizing a world with possibilities we cannot yet imagine—until reading this transformative, inspiring, and necessary book.

We're discussing Imaginable in January, February and March.

Doughnut Economics: 7 Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist

Kate Raworth

Relentless financial crises. Extreme inequalities in wealth. Remorseless pressure on the environment. Anyone can see that our economic system is broken. But can it be fixed?

In Doughnut Economics, Oxford academic Kate Raworth identifies the seven critical ways in which mainstream economics has led us astray - from selling us the myth of 'rational economic man' to obsessing over growth at all costs - and offers instead an alternative roadmap for bringing humanity into a sweet spot that meets the needs of all within the means of the planet. Ambitious, radical and provocative, she offers a new cutting-edge economic model fit for the challenges of the 21st century. 

We're discussing Doughnut Economics in November, January and February.

The Manual of Design Fiction

Julian Bleecker, Nick Foster, Fabien Girardin & Nicolas Nova

We find ourselves at a moment in time when an increasingly complex state of the world - and our place within it - makes an orientation towards the future not only relevant, but essential. Today, no future is improbable, which is why the unanticipated white space - the void of unknown unknowns - must be investigated, considered and discussed at all levels of an organization.

From climate change and economic instability to rising inequality and the fragility of democratic institutions, we face a panoply of uncertainties. For too long major decision makers have largely treated the future as a matter of business modeling, an engineering problem, some sort of sexy vision exercise, or savvy marketing campaign to foment anticipation around future products. What we need are alternative frameworks or mindsets for decision making that consider solutions along with their risks and implications, while incorporating a diversity of both disciplinary and human viewpoints. Design fiction is a method to vividly render tangible future scenarios before taking action, using a process that is broadly collaborative and includes a variety of stakeholders or interests.

Join us to discuss The Manual of Design Fiction in early November or late November.

Thinking About the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight

Andy Hines & Peter Bishop

Thinking about the Future distills the expertise of three dozen senior foresight professionals into a set of essential guidelines for carrying out successful strategic foresight. Presented in a highly scannable yet personable style, each guideline includes an explanation and rationale, key steps, a case example, and resources for further study. The 115 guidelines are organized into six sequential categories that mirror the phases of a strategic foresight activity, namely Framing, Scanning, Forecasting, Visioning, Planning, and Acting. Executives will find both the guidelines and the framework invaluable for understanding what it takes to successfully explore the future, while analysts who actively carry out strategic foresight projects will find the book an indispensable reference that they turn to again and again.

Move quick to join our final discussion in November.