When it comes to attempts at dreaming up the future, I believe we can learn as much from what could be as we can from what we hope will never be. So some of the below are ideal worlds, some are worlds we may hope don’t come true, but can act as cautionary tales. This is no particular order and nowhere near an exhaustive list.

Historical Futurism

• Movies:
  • The Martian
  • Her
  • Ex Machina
  • Elysium
  • Gravity
  • Wall-E
  • District 9
  • Inception
  • Arrival
  • Moon
  • Interstellar
  • I Am Legend
  • Mad Max: Fury Road
  • Edge of Tomorrow
  • Avatar
  • Snowpiercer
  • The Omega Man
  • Ad Astra
  • Westworld (movie)
  • Soylent Green
  • The 6th Day
  • Blade Runner
  • Outland
  • Terminator 2: Judgment Day
• TV series:
  • Black Mirror
  • The Handmaid's Tale
  • Westworld
  • The Expanse
  • Years and Years
  • Humans
  • Travelers
  • Altered Carbon
  • Devs
  • The 100
  • The Three Body Problem
  • The Man in the High Castle
  • Continuum
  • Brave New World
  • The Outer Limits
  • Earth 2
  • The X-Files
  • Colony
  • Minority Report
• Books:
  • The Hunger Games
  • The Maze Runner
  • The Giver
  • The Road
  • Ready Player One
  • Wool
  • Red Rising
  • The Circle
  • Transhuman
  • The Terminal Experiment
  • The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
  • Snow Crash
  • The War of the Worlds
  • The Road to Nowhere
  • Equilibrium
  • The Expanse (book series)
  • Children of Men
• Graphic novels/comic book series:
  • Y: The Last Man
  • Transmetropolitan
  • Watchmen
  • The Walking Dead
  • The Quantum Age
  • Upgrade Soul
  • The Surrogates
  • Blame!
• Short stories:
  • The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster
  • The Last Question by Isaac Asimov
  • The Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C. Clarke
  • A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury
  • I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison
  • Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang
  • The Jaunt by Stephen King
  • Second Variety by Philip K. Dick
  • The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
  • The Veldt by Ray Bradbury