This book came out of Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination, and is the product of a collaboration effort between science fiction writers and actual scientists. Each short story takes a real piece of current day science or technology and extrapolates it into the future; at the end of each story are links to the relevant real science and discussions from scientists about the story.

The stories themselves are a mixed bunch, I definitely liked some better than others and there's a few that didn't impress me, but there were also a few "wow" stories and the overall premise of the book is really the best side of science fiction writing.

From future houses that are entire self-contained living ecosystems to new social media "Dorians" who personify companies and change appearance and personality (like the fictional Portrait of Dorian Gray) based on a summary of the customers' ratings, to charity work saving endangered elephants by crowdsourcing remote drone monitoring to a network of global volunteers, to much much more ... fascinating ideas and thought provoking. Rather than reading straight through this I've been taking one story at a time for the last few months and thinking about it for a while in between. If you like science and speculative science fiction then this collection is highly recommended. :)