The future - what really lies ahead? So often it's portrayed as a fascist utopia, with silver jumpsuits and jetpacks, or as a leather-clad, post-nuclear wasteland, but is that how we truly see it?

Book of the Future is a compilation of predictions and thoughts on life in the year 2020, submitted to the BBCi web site over five months. Each entry has been rated by the site's researchers and, from the hundreds submitted, here are the top seventy-five, plus a few extra.

Guest authors include the late Douglas Adams, astronomer David Levy, Tara Palmer-Tomkinson and environment minister Michael Meacher, and artists such as Ralph Steadman (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), Jonathan Pugh (of The Times) and Robert Thompson (Private Eye) have contributed original illustrations.

From the humorous to the heartfelt and the informed to the insane, Book of the Future challenges the pre-eminence of tea leaves and horoscopes in predicting our world in 2020, providing a unique view into the nation's psyche. [Thanx to Crissy]


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