2145: A Journey Into the Future (Paperback or Softback)

The 21st century has a name in 2145. People call it the Wasteful Century.

By the time Ron Neuwirth is born, the damage is done. Most of the American tropics are uninhabitable. The global population has dropped from seven billion to three. Water costs $130 a bottle. Pythons move north through Tennessee because nothing stops them anymore. The 100 richest families have built a secret island in the Bering Sea and called it Tang, from which they run the world without ever having to look at it.

Ron is 20, and he has just been given permission to leave.

Peter Seidel wrote 2145 from United Nations reports and U.S. government data projections. He was not writing fantasy. He was projecting forward the trends already in motion: habitat loss, wealth concentration, surveillance, and ecological collapse driven by a century of growth-at-any-cost. The year 2145 is not a prediction. It is an extrapolation, and it is meant to be uncomfortable.

What makes this novel unlike most cli-fi is the specificity of its world. You do not read about vague civilizational collapse. You read about an ecology professor who lost her job the year universities eliminated every department that did not directly serve GDP growth. You read about a journalist whose deep investigation of poverty in the South was killed before it could be published. You read about a surveillance operative who, after years of controlling what people know, starts to listen for the first time.

"A compelling, although somewhat shocking, narrative of where humankind is heading... the message and storyline kept me interested until the final pages." —Edna Dargie, Principal and Teacher (Retired), Toronto District School Board

Order 2145 today.

Peter Seidel holds a B.S. in Architectural Engineering from the University of Colorado and a Masters in Architectural Planning from the Illinois Institute of Technology, where he studied under renowned architect Mies van der Rohe. Seidel has served as a faculty member at the University of Michigan and Virginia Tech, and he also taught at Central China Institute of Science and Technology. His work has been published in numerous academic journals, and he has also authored four other books: Invisible Walls, Global Survival, 2045, and Uncommon Sense.