Ancestral Night
by Elizabeth Bear · 5 Mar 2019 · 596pp · 163,351 words
they were carrying on a limitless multidimensional existence where distances had as little meaning for them across galaxies as they did for us on a planetary scale. I should have asked Singer how the Baomind sang, I realized now, in the soundless depths of space. Now I knew; it sang inside its
The End of Astronauts: Why Robots Are the Future of Exploration
by Donald Goldsmith and Martin Rees · 18 Apr 2022 · 192pp · 63,813 words
to our current installation at the South Pole, though operating under much harsher circumstances. Some enthusiasts regard this as a preliminary stage in a grand, planetary-scale project to turn Mars into a planet more hospitable to human habitation, potentially capable of supporting a population equal to Earth’s. Although Mars has
Fire and Ice: The Volcanoes of the Solar System
by Natalie Starkey · 29 Sep 2021 · 309pp · 97,320 words
understand the inner workings of planets, then looking at what happens on the surface is a great place to begin. It’s a case of planetary-scale bookkeeping, documenting past events in order to piece together their history. Active planetary bodies literally spew out their insides, which offers a glimpse of what
…
had a lesser effect on planetary evolution. During the time that aluminium-26 was active and generating heat, it was an incredibly effective source of planetary-scale warming. The heat produced was enough, in fact, to melt the planetesimals within which it was contained, turning their rocky interiors into molten rock, or
…
be capable of fuelling significant geological processes at its surface. A planet that is cold inside, with no volcanism, is a dead one. Nevertheless, without planetary-scale cooling in the first place, we would never have seen volcanic features on these bodies either. In terms of making a life-giving, geologically interesting
Danube (Panther)
by Claudio Magris · 10 Jan 2011 · 459pp · 154,280 words
is a journey, as they say, and we pass across the face of the earth as guests. In this world administered and organized on a planetary scale, to be sure, the adventure and mystery of travel would seem to be dead and done for: even Baudelaire’s Voyagers, who set out to
Cosmos
by Carl Sagan · 1 Jan 1980 · 404pp · 131,034 words
improved. In the same brief interval, we also have improved. We have tempered our anger, frustration and despair with reason. We have ameliorated on a planetary scale injustices that only recently were global and endemic. But our weapons can now kill billions. Have we improved fast enough? Are we teaching reason as
Iron Sunrise
by Stross, Charles · 28 Oct 2004 · 462pp · 142,240 words
. The planet has been unified for the past ninety years, since the survivors finished merrily slaughtering everyone else, formed a federation, had a nifty little planetary-scale nuclear war, formed another federation, and buried the hatchet (in one another’s backs). For most of the past forty years, New Dresden has been
Strange New Worlds: The Search for Alien Planets and Life Beyond Our Solar System
by Ray Jayawardhana · 3 Feb 2011 · 257pp · 66,480 words
the Earth is special among its brethren in the solar system as the only planet with liquid water on its surface and life on a planetary scale. But there’s no reason to think that our solar system is unique in the Galaxy, given its hundreds of billions of stars. Unfolding Story
Catching Stardust: Comets, Asteroids and the Birth of the Solar System
by Natalie Starkey · 8 Mar 2018 · 284pp · 89,477 words
changes in their long history since formation. They have been melted and re-formed many times over, experiencing violent impacts from space and then undergoing planetary-scale processing such as plate tectonics, of which we’ll learn more later. In fact, because of these processes, the planets have almost completely hidden away
…
to, with some being energetically closer than the Moon, requiring less rocket thrust to reach them. The relatively small size of comets and asteroids on planetary scales also gives them a low surface gravity which makes them easier to leave than the Moon, requiring less energy to blast back off their surfaces
Case for Mars
by Robert Zubrin · 27 Jun 2011 · 437pp · 126,860 words
planet’s entire surface. In the end, the mobility requirements of Martian exploration are profoundly simple: to explore a planet you need mobility on a planetary scale. It’s a simple but often overlooked point. So how will the crew of our first piloted Mars mission get around? The battery-powered Lunar
…
cold crevice, lava tube, or cavern on the north face of some hill on Mars there is ice to be found, and in regions where planetary-scale climate models say it can’t be. If you want to harvest some, though, bring dynamite. Ice at Martian temperatures can be pretty tough stuff
…
Martin) NIMFs—Nuclear Rockets using Indigenous Martian Fuels—as rocketplanes or as ballistic spacecraft would afford Mars explorers and later colonists unlimited mobility on a planetary scale. Exploration team on a partially terraformed Mars. (Artwork by Michael Carroll) The New Created World. (Artwork by Michael Carroll) Liquid water once coursed over the
Five Billion Years of Solitude: The Search for Life Among the Stars
by Lee Billings · 2 Oct 2013 · 326pp · 97,089 words
“primordial soup” of organic compounds—sugars, lipids, and even amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins. Acting over millions of years on a planetary scale, such reactions could easily synthesize the organic ingredients for life from inorganic chemical precursors. On our own planet, the fossil record suggested that life must
…
Moon, the Martian moon Phobos, and Mars. The prominent astronomer Fred Whipple suggested that Earth’s population would have stabilized at 100 billion, and that planetary-scale engineering of Mars would have altered the Red Planet’s climate to allow its 700,000 inhabitants to be self-sufficient. The director of NASA
…
scales differences between living things and their inanimate environs became indistinct, and the world could rightly be viewed as a complex system analogous to a planetary-scale organism. He called this union of the biosphere and the rest of the Earth “Gaia” after the goddess of Mother Earth in Greek mythology. With
Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist
by Kate Raworth · 22 Mar 2017 · 403pp · 111,119 words
Mapping Mars: Science, Imagination and the Birth of a World
by Oliver Morton · 15 Feb 2003 · 409pp · 129,423 words
The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans
by Mark Lynas · 3 Oct 2011 · 369pp · 98,776 words
The Planet Remade: How Geoengineering Could Change the World
by Oliver Morton · 26 Sep 2015 · 469pp · 142,230 words
The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty
by Benjamin H. Bratton · 19 Feb 2016 · 903pp · 235,753 words
Ecovillages: Lessons for Sustainable Community
by Karen T. Litfin · 16 Dec 2013 · 322pp · 89,523 words
Accelerando
by Stross, Charles · 22 Jan 2005 · 489pp · 148,885 words
The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions
by Greta Thunberg · 14 Feb 2023 · 651pp · 162,060 words
The Interstellar Age: Inside the Forty-Year Voyager Mission
by Jim Bell · 24 Feb 2015 · 310pp · 89,653 words
Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape Our World
by Gaia Vince · 22 Aug 2022 · 302pp · 92,206 words
Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
by Carl Sagan · 8 Sep 1997 · 356pp · 102,224 words
Origin Story: A Big History of Everything
by David Christian · 21 May 2018 · 334pp · 100,201 words
Novacene: The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence
by James Lovelock · 27 Aug 2019 · 94pp · 33,179 words
Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World
by Jane McGonigal · 20 Jan 2011 · 470pp · 128,328 words
Coming of Age in the Milky Way
by Timothy Ferris · 30 Jun 1988 · 661pp · 169,298 words
A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?
by Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith · 6 Nov 2023 · 490pp · 132,502 words
The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community
by David C. Korten · 1 Jan 2001
The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity
by Toby Ord · 24 Mar 2020 · 513pp · 152,381 words
Rocket Billionaires: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the New Space Race
by Tim Fernholz · 20 Mar 2018 · 328pp · 96,141 words
Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium
by Carl Sagan · 11 May 1998 · 272pp · 76,089 words
The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis
by Jeremy Rifkin · 31 Dec 2009 · 879pp · 233,093 words
Our Moon: How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are
by Rebecca Boyle · 16 Jan 2024 · 354pp · 109,574 words
Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution
by Howard Rheingold · 24 Dec 2011
Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100
by Michio Kaku · 15 Mar 2011 · 523pp · 148,929 words
What Technology Wants
by Kevin Kelly · 14 Jul 2010 · 476pp · 132,042 words
Judas Unchained
by Peter F. Hamilton · 1 Jan 2006 · 1,386pp · 379,115 words
Grand Transitions: How the Modern World Was Made
by Vaclav Smil · 2 Mar 2021 · 1,324pp · 159,290 words
Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny
by Robert Wright · 28 Dec 2010
The Big Ratchet: How Humanity Thrives in the Face of Natural Crisis
by Ruth Defries · 8 Sep 2014 · 342pp · 88,736 words
The Moon: A History for the Future
by Oliver Morton · 1 May 2019 · 319pp · 100,984 words
Revelation Space
by Alastair Reynolds · 1 Jan 2000 · 804pp · 212,335 words
The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning
by James E. Lovelock · 1 Jan 2009 · 239pp · 68,598 words
Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made
by Gaia Vince · 19 Oct 2014 · 505pp · 147,916 words
Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
by Jason Hickel · 12 Aug 2020 · 286pp · 87,168 words
Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life
by Adam Greenfield · 29 May 2017 · 410pp · 119,823 words
Global Catastrophic Risks
by Nick Bostrom and Milan M. Cirkovic · 2 Jul 2008
House of Suns
by Alastair Reynolds · 16 Apr 2008 · 635pp · 186,208 words
Underland: A Deep Time Journey
by Robert Macfarlane · 1 May 2019 · 489pp · 136,195 words
The Gig Economy: A Critical Introduction
by Jamie Woodcock and Mark Graham · 17 Jan 2020 · 207pp · 59,298 words
Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations
by Thomas L. Friedman · 22 Nov 2016 · 602pp · 177,874 words
Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth?
by Alan Weisman · 23 Sep 2013 · 579pp · 164,339 words
The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-First Century
by Ronald Bailey · 20 Jul 2015 · 417pp · 109,367 words
Green Swans: The Coming Boom in Regenerative Capitalism
by John Elkington · 6 Apr 2020 · 384pp · 93,754 words
If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities
by Benjamin R. Barber · 5 Nov 2013 · 501pp · 145,943 words
The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life
by Robert Wright · 1 Jan 1994 · 604pp · 161,455 words
This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate
by Naomi Klein · 15 Sep 2014 · 829pp · 229,566 words
Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace
by Ronald J. Deibert · 13 May 2013 · 317pp · 98,745 words
Jennifer Morgue
by Stross, Charles · 12 Jan 2006
The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future
by Kevin Kelly · 6 Jun 2016 · 371pp · 108,317 words
The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement
by David Graeber · 13 Aug 2012 · 284pp · 92,387 words
Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities
by Vaclav Smil · 23 Sep 2019
Practical Doomsday: A User's Guide to the End of the World
by Michal Zalewski · 11 Jan 2022 · 337pp · 96,666 words
Vertical: The City From Satellites to Bunkers
by Stephen Graham · 8 Nov 2016 · 519pp · 136,708 words
The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet
by Jeff Goodell · 10 Jul 2023 · 347pp · 108,323 words
The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Finally Solving the Mystery of Life
by Paul Davies · 31 Jan 2019 · 253pp · 83,473 words
The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World
by Simon Winchester · 7 May 2018 · 449pp · 129,511 words
The Rise of the Network Society
by Manuel Castells · 31 Aug 1996 · 843pp · 223,858 words
Reset
by Ronald J. Deibert · 14 Aug 2020
How to Spend a Trillion Dollars
by Rowan Hooper · 15 Jan 2020 · 285pp · 86,858 words
Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism
by Stephen Graham · 30 Oct 2009 · 717pp · 150,288 words
What to Think About Machines That Think: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Age of Machine Intelligence
by John Brockman · 5 Oct 2015 · 481pp · 125,946 words
Skyfaring: A Journey With a Pilot
by Mark Vanhoenacker · 1 Jun 2015 · 319pp · 105,949 words
Bureaucracy
by David Graeber · 3 Feb 2015 · 252pp · 80,636 words
Humankind: Solidarity With Non-Human People
by Timothy Morton · 14 Oct 2017 · 225pp · 70,180 words
Rationality: From AI to Zombies
by Eliezer Yudkowsky · 11 Mar 2015 · 1,737pp · 491,616 words
Losing Earth: A Recent History
by Nathaniel Rich · 4 Aug 2018 · 148pp · 45,249 words
World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech
by Franklin Foer · 31 Aug 2017 · 281pp · 71,242 words
The Green New Deal: Why the Fossil Fuel Civilization Will Collapse by 2028, and the Bold Economic Plan to Save Life on Earth
by Jeremy Rifkin · 9 Sep 2019 · 327pp · 84,627 words
Engineering Infinity
by Jonathan Strahan · 28 Dec 2010 · 360pp · 101,636 words
Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires
by Douglas Rushkoff · 7 Sep 2022 · 205pp · 61,903 words
Ways of Being: Beyond Human Intelligence
by James Bridle · 6 Apr 2022 · 502pp · 132,062 words
The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World
by Pedro Domingos · 21 Sep 2015 · 396pp · 117,149 words
Fall of Civilizations: Stories of Greatness and Decline
by Paul Cooper · 31 Mar 2024 · 583pp · 174,033 words
Immortality: The Quest to Live Forever and How It Drives Civilization
by Stephen Cave · 2 Apr 2012 · 299pp · 98,943 words
The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory
by Andrew J. Bacevich · 7 Jan 2020 · 254pp · 68,133 words
The God Delusion
by Richard Dawkins · 12 Sep 2006 · 478pp · 142,608 words
The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America
by Steven Johnson · 26 Dec 2008 · 200pp · 60,987 words
More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity
by Adam Becker · 14 Jun 2025 · 381pp · 119,533 words
EcoVillage at Ithaca Pioneering a Sustainable Culture (2005)
by Liz Walker · 20 May 2005
The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-First Century's Greatest Dilemma
by Mustafa Suleyman · 4 Sep 2023 · 444pp · 117,770 words
Turing's Cathedral
by George Dyson · 6 Mar 2012
Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia
by Anthony M. Townsend · 29 Sep 2013 · 464pp · 127,283 words
Cloudmoney: Cash, Cards, Crypto, and the War for Our Wallets
by Brett Scott · 4 Jul 2022 · 308pp · 85,850 words
The Dark Cloud: How the Digital World Is Costing the Earth
by Guillaume Pitron · 14 Jun 2023 · 271pp · 79,355 words
Breakout Nations: In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles
by Ruchir Sharma · 8 Apr 2012 · 411pp · 114,717 words
The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World
by Jeff Goodell · 23 Oct 2017 · 292pp · 92,588 words
Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change
by George Marshall · 18 Aug 2014 · 298pp · 85,386 words
The Global Minotaur
by Yanis Varoufakis and Paul Mason · 4 Jul 2015 · 394pp · 85,734 words
The Slow Fix: Solve Problems, Work Smarter, and Live Better in a World Addicted to Speed
by Carl Honore · 29 Jan 2013 · 266pp · 87,411 words
Everything Is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer
by Duncan J. Watts · 28 Mar 2011 · 327pp · 103,336 words
Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction
by Alec Nevala-Lee · 22 Oct 2018 · 622pp · 169,014 words
Nervous States: Democracy and the Decline of Reason
by William Davies · 26 Feb 2019 · 349pp · 98,868 words
Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation
by Kevin Roose · 9 Mar 2021 · 208pp · 57,602 words
Covid-19: The Pandemic That Never Should Have Happened and How to Stop the Next One
by Debora MacKenzie · 13 Jul 2020 · 266pp · 80,273 words
Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the Surveillance State
by Barton Gellman · 20 May 2020 · 562pp · 153,825 words
The Techno-Human Condition
by Braden R. Allenby and Daniel R. Sarewitz · 15 Feb 2011
The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading: Tales of the Computer as Culture Machine
by Peter Lunenfeld · 31 Mar 2011 · 239pp · 56,531 words
Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money, Business, and the World
by Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscott · 9 May 2016 · 515pp · 126,820 words
24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep
by Jonathan Crary · 3 Jun 2013 · 102pp · 33,345 words
We-Think: Mass Innovation, Not Mass Production
by Charles Leadbeater · 9 Dec 2010 · 313pp · 84,312 words
The Rare Metals War
by Guillaume Pitron · 15 Feb 2020 · 249pp · 66,492 words
The Musical Human: A History of Life on Earth
by Michael Spitzer · 31 Mar 2021 · 632pp · 163,143 words
Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle
by Silvia Federici · 4 Oct 2012 · 277pp · 80,703 words
The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism
by Jeremy Rifkin · 31 Mar 2014 · 565pp · 151,129 words
Money: 5,000 Years of Debt and Power
by Michel Aglietta · 23 Oct 2018 · 665pp · 146,542 words
How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World
by Steven Johnson · 28 Sep 2014 · 243pp · 65,374 words
The Star Builders: Nuclear Fusion and the Race to Power the Planet
by Arthur Turrell · 2 Aug 2021 · 297pp · 84,447 words
Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future
by Ed Conway · 15 Jun 2023 · 515pp · 152,128 words
Grouped: How Small Groups of Friends Are the Key to Influence on the Social Web
by Paul Adams · 1 Nov 2011 · 123pp · 32,382 words
Operation Chaos: The Vietnam Deserters Who Fought the CIA, the Brainwashers, and Themselves
by Matthew Sweet · 13 Feb 2018 · 493pp · 136,235 words
We Need New Stories: Challenging the Toxic Myths Behind Our Age of Discontent
by Nesrine Malik · 4 Sep 2019
The Controlled Demolition of the American Empire
by Jeff Berwick and Charlie Robinson · 14 Apr 2020 · 491pp · 141,690 words
The Strange Order of Things: The Biological Roots of Culture
by Antonio Damasio · 6 Feb 2018 · 289pp · 87,292 words
Future Perfect: The Case for Progress in a Networked Age
by Steven Johnson · 14 Jul 2012 · 184pp · 53,625 words
The Key Man: The True Story of How the Global Elite Was Duped by a Capitalist Fairy Tale
by Simon Clark and Will Louch · 14 Jul 2021 · 403pp · 105,550 words
ZeroZeroZero
by Roberto Saviano · 4 Apr 2013 · 442pp · 135,006 words
Smart Machines: IBM's Watson and the Era of Cognitive Computing (Columbia Business School Publishing)
by John E. Kelly Iii · 23 Sep 2013 · 118pp · 35,663 words
Principles: Life and Work
by Ray Dalio · 18 Sep 2017 · 516pp · 157,437 words
As Gods: A Moral History of the Genetic Age
by Matthew Cobb · 15 Nov 2022 · 772pp · 150,109 words
Age of Anger: A History of the Present
by Pankaj Mishra · 26 Jan 2017 · 410pp · 106,931 words
Mine!: How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives
by Michael A. Heller and James Salzman · 2 Mar 2021 · 332pp · 100,245 words
California
by Sara Benson · 15 Oct 2010
The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America
by Andrés Reséndez · 11 Apr 2016 · 532pp · 162,509 words
The Locavore's Dilemma
by Pierre Desrochers and Hiroko Shimizu · 29 May 2012 · 329pp · 85,471 words
PostGIS in Action, 2nd Edition
by Regina O. Obe and Leo S. Hsu · 2 May 2015
People Powered: How Communities Can Supercharge Your Business, Brand, and Teams
by Jono Bacon · 12 Nov 2019 · 302pp · 73,946 words
Arriving Today: From Factory to Front Door -- Why Everything Has Changed About How and What We Buy
by Christopher Mims · 13 Sep 2021 · 385pp · 112,842 words
MegaThreats: Ten Dangerous Trends That Imperil Our Future, and How to Survive Them
by Nouriel Roubini · 17 Oct 2022 · 328pp · 96,678 words
Fall; Or, Dodge in Hell
by Neal Stephenson · 3 Jun 2019 · 993pp · 318,161 words
Being You: A New Science of Consciousness
by Anil Seth · 29 Aug 2021 · 418pp · 102,597 words
PostGIS in Action
by Regina O. Obe and Leo S. Hsu · 2 May 2015
A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail
by Bill Bryson · 8 Sep 2010 · 331pp · 106,256 words
Shutdown: How COVID Shook the World's Economy
by Adam Tooze · 15 Nov 2021 · 561pp · 138,158 words
Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning About a Highly Connected World
by David Easley and Jon Kleinberg · 15 Nov 2010 · 1,535pp · 337,071 words
Net Zero: How We Stop Causing Climate Change
by Dieter Helm · 2 Sep 2020 · 304pp · 90,084 words
Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World
by Clive Thompson · 26 Mar 2019 · 499pp · 144,278 words