Never before has looking into the future been so complicated or so traumatic. Prophesies, doomsdays, conspiracies, calamities, ice ages, and potential revolutions are everywhere. Wherever you look - from the cover of Vanity Fair, to the weird weather outside your window - he messages seem universal: the Earth our children inherit will almost certainly be nothing like the one we currently inhabit. In the spirit of our massive uncertainty, we welcome you to Nozone X, FORECAST.

How will global warming affect our economies, our coastlines, our food chains? Which species will survive, and which will become extinct? Will the future be manufactured in Beijing or Bangalore? Will terrorists target LA or DC? Will the future be dark or lite? Hot or cold? Sugar free or caffeinated? Will Iran be the next Iraq? In the next fifty years, will things get a) worse, b) much worse, or c) much much worse? In the next election, will red states become blue, or blue states become red? Has the American dream become the rest of the world’s nightmare? Can the U.S. indefinitely sustain a trillion-dollar deficit? Will markets crash or bubbles burst? Will the future be overcast or sunny? Low pressure or high? Inhabitable or not? Or will the answers to these questions be “none of the above” - an array of possibilities not even accessible to our present-bound imaginations.

In Nozone IX, Empire, we looked at the networks of power that dominate our political life. In this issue we ask, what are the effects and long-term consequences of our current ways of life? NASA uses some of the world’s most powerful computers to predict the future; Nozone uses some of the world’s greatest imaginations to bring it to life.