The Library of Futures

Twenty-five books imagined the machine mind. Now there's a timeline to grade them against. Each one gets its inventions checked off against 2026 and a distance from today, in light-years. The rule for the distance is printed right here, so you can argue with it.

25 WORLDS · 98 PREDICTIONS · ONE TIMELINE

The shelf

The voyage home

Every planet on this map is a book, placed by how far its future sits from the one we got. The far ones imagined machines we never built, the near ones you could almost mistake for the news. Color marks the machine's role; size shows how many of its bets paid off. A wide ring means the book lets its machines in. A tight one flinches. Click a planet to open its card.

Role is flavor, not physics: it falls out of the spec on each card: mind (tool · savant · peer · beyond · alien), reach (body · place · network · everywhere), and what the machine can do, checked against 2026. Savant (superhuman at some things, subhuman at others) is where this year's models sit.

The distance rule Four mismatches with 2026, evenly weighted. How the machine arrives: creeping in gradually costs 0, getting built and then breaking loose ½, waking up overnight (or going unexplained) the full 1. Who holds it: a corporation 0; one owner, a state, or everyone ½; no one 1. What it can do: the share of the machine's capability list that has come true, partly counting half: the shortfall is the mismatch. And its AI predictions, scored the same way. Average the four, map the result onto 0.5–40 light-years on a log scale, and near books feel near. The weights are even because I couldn't defend anything fancier. Argue below.

The worlds

Twenty-five futures, farthest first

The cards run farthest first, down to the books that could be mistaken for this morning. Each one checks the book's forecast against what 2026 actually looks like, lists what it invented and what showed up, and links out to the history and the open questions it touched.

The starmap

One glowing thread

Every course the shelf plotted, against the one reality actually took.

The verdict