Mal Fletcher's new book to be launched in November

This morning Mal Fletcher tweeted:
"Just saw draft ideas for cover of my new #book, launch late November. Very impressive! Editing now in progress. #author"
It sounds like a fast-turnaround, but then Mal Fletcher is a man with a firm grip on the future.
 
A futurist and social commentator with a background as a Christian pastor, Fletcher moved from Australia to Europe in 1994 to found Next Wave International, a communications group which helps European community organisations and charities to deal with future change.
 
Based first in Copenhagen then London, he also launched the Euro Youth Events network, hosting ongoing, alcohol-free concerts in eight major European capitals.
 
Fletcher also founded the Strategic Leadership Consultation, an annual summit for European community and church leaders from 20 nations. The summit focuses on engaging the future of society in a proactive way.
 
In 2008, he launched 2020Plus to assist companies and media groups as they prepare for change during a near-global recession. His social comment features extensively in major media and press outlets, including BBC TV and radio, Sky TV and others. 
 
The TV series Fletcher wrote and hosted, Edges, has been seen in many regions of the world and his books have been translated into five languages.

The title of his new book is yet to be revealed, likewise the cover tantalisingly tweeted about this morning.
But an extract from the book is available from the 2020plus website:
The next few decades will witness the greatest challenges to human survival in our history - and the greatest opportunities for creative fulfilment. A new but rapidly burgeoning field of transhuman technologies will emerge, promising us all kinds of physical and mental advantages as we meld our human tissue with mechanical or organi-mechanical materials and nanochips. Need a memory upgrade? Simply inject this nanobot into your brain. At the same time, this sparkling new technology will leave many of our children - and their children - grappling with the question, 'What does it really mean to be human?'
Read the full extract here and stay tuned for more details of Fletcher's new book.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book review: The life to come by Michelle de Krester

Image
One of the characters I most enjoyed in Michelle de Krester's The life to come is Sydney's inner west. I arrived in Newtown on a yellowy January morning in the early 1980s and lived above King St near the start of Erskinville Rd for six months before a succession of terrace houses across Newtown, Emmore and Macdonaldtown. Coming from the country to study 'Communications' I could easily have been minor character fodder for the author, momentarily shuffling by in ill-fitting jeans alongside the ubiquitous Pippa and George (that is, they are the only characters appearing in all five sections of what is an artfully decentralised narrative). I might not have done too well descriptively from de Krester's pen. She finds a way to poke holes in all of her characters, perhaps with the exception of expat Christabel who is the most downtrodden of characters, but not by the author, who otherwise sustains a mildly scornful, disapproving or comedic tone. For example, Geo...
Read more + comment »

Book review: The Nowhere Child by Christian White

Image
Little Sammy Went is gone, and while The Nowhere Child tells us where fairly quickly - who, how, why and at what cost takes the rest of this fast-paced book to uncover. I use the cliche 'fast-paced' on purpose because like most genre books, except for the exceptional few, the 'fast-pace' does rely on cliches to a fair degree. Which is not to say The Nowhere Child is a poor novel. Rather it is a clever book, with more than enough periods of real tension and surprise to keep the reader turning pages (or flicking them as the case may be). Clever because it embeds just enough themes that are deemed praiseworthy and admirable in the subjective group-think world that is publishing. (That is not a criticism of the book or publishing, just a reality in these days of thought-fear.) Of course there is the obligatory references to reading and authors - we must worship at the the book altar of course. Being set in both Australia and the US may explain why at times Matth...
Read more + comment »

Book review: The Choke by Sophie Laguna

Image
The Choke tells the story of a young girl raised by her war-ravaged grandfather in a beat-up house near the fictional Victorian town of Nullabri on the banks of the Murray River. Nullabri may well be located across the water from fictional Bellington and Riversend from Chris Hammer's Scrubland as we find ourselves in another rendition of dystopian rural Australia where the river (or lack of) is a silent presence. Author Sophie Laguna has again given her child heroine Justine and the other young characters a warmth and vulnerability so easily observable in children and it is part of the growing tension of the book as to how this will be ripped apart by the mostly dysfunctional adults in their lives. Or by the eroding process of simply growing up in poverty and ignorance. There is something dangerously criminal about Justine's father who is mostly absent yet longed for by Justine and her step-brothers. The depiction of his return, his dismantling of his sons' fragile...
Read more + comment »