After gorging on science fiction short stories for several years, I’ve finally got my fill of science fiction. At 74, aging is catching up with me. I was reading 52 books a year, and regularly posting on two blogs: Auxiliary Memory and this one, Classics of Science Fiction. My reading has slowed to about a fourth of what it was, and so has my blogging.

I’ve decided to post all my essays to Auxiliary Memory and put Classics of Science Fiction on hold. If I happen to write about science fiction, I’ll post it there. I’d rather look somewhat productive on one blog, rather than unproductive on two.

Also, I hunger for different kinds of reading. We’re now living science fiction. Reading about what’s going on now seems further out than speculation about the future. With AI, robots, space travel, climate change, astronomy, renewable energy, and so many other fields, it feels like we’re approaching a perfect storm of change.

One video I recently watched suggested that the amount of change humanity experienced in the 250-year history of the United States is enough to kill a person from future shock. If George Washington time-traveled to 2026, they speculated he would die of future shock. The guy also speculated that to generate that much future shock by bringing someone from before 1776 to 1776 would require going back 13,000 years. I have no idea how they calculated that, but it sounds right from all my history book reading. I believe society is breaking down now because the amount of future shock one person experiences in a lifetime is approaching what Washington would have felt.

I’m switching from science fiction to nonfiction to comprehend that future shock. Here are the books I’ve bought and plan to review at Auxiliary Memory. It will take me some time. Like I said, I’m slowing down.

• I Am A Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter
• Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
• Worldviews: An Introduction to the History of Philosophy of Science by Richard DeWitt
• Why the World Doesn’t Make Sense by Steven Hagen
• Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain by Antonio Damasio
• A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness by Michael Pollan
• Improbable Destinies: Fate, Chance, and the Future of Evolution by Jonathan B. Losos
• Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software by Steven Johnson
• Being You: A New Science of Consciousness by Anil Seth
• Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief by Jordan B. Peterson
• The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity–And Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race by Daniel Z. Lieberman and Michael E. Long
• Sensation: The New Science of Physical Intelligence by Thalma Lobel
• An Immense World by Ed Yong (reread)
• Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman
• Ways of Seeing by John Berger
• Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know by Adam Grant
• The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture by Jerome H. Barlow, Leda Cosmides, and John Tooby
• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (reread)
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig (3rd reading)
• The Gang of Three: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle by Neel Burton
• The Idea Machine by Joel J. Miller
• Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella H. Meadows
• Your Brain Is a Time Machine: The Neuroscience and Physics of Time by Dean Buonomano

This is far more ambitious than I’m capable of right now, but I’m going to try.

James Wallace Harris, 4/13/26