Libraries Sheffield: Spotlight 36: The Future

In our final Library Spotlight, we're looking to the future.

Alongside our new Order and Collect service, we'll be featuring plenty of family activities throughout the summer and lots of things to discover during our Year of Reading, like our Big City Read and our brand new Sheffield Libraries podcast.

Sounds of the future

One of our favourite finds this week is this fantastic sci-fi-focused episode of the RNIB books podcast Read On.

This episode features a discussion of the novel that inspired the film Blade Runner and an interview with Jeff Wayne, creator of the classic War of the Worlds musical.

Listen here

High tech characters, low tech crafts

These brilliant tutorials from Cardboard Superheroes show how to transform cardboard boxes into impressive models of classic sci-fi characters like Wall-E and R2D2, iconic spaceships, and superhero props. A perfect holiday craft for older children (and for the young-at-heart too!)

Futures past

One of the most impressive (and sometimes, most unsettling) things about science fiction is how accurately some stories have predicted the future.

One short story that has been singled out lately for its eerie foreshadowing of not only recent events but also the role that social media plays in modern life was first published back in 1909, and created by someone rarely thought of as a science fiction writer - E.M. Forster.

This BBC article explores the uncanny parallels between Forster's The Machine Stops and current events.

The story is also available in the public domain, and can be read in full here.

A time traveller's guide to Sheffield

We can't talk about sci-fi without a nod to Sheffield's most famous extra-terrestrial visitor of recent years: the Thirteenth Doctor. (She even crops up in the Book of Sheffield: the collection of short stories we're sharing for our Big City Read!)

In this video, the University of Sheffield looks at Sheffield's past, present and future through another kind of time machine: film and TV.

Planning a post-lockdown future

Moving on to a less fantastical kind of future, Dr Rangan Chatterjee, author of bestsellers like The 4 Pillar Plan, regularly discusses making realistic and self-compassionate lifestyle changes in his Feel Better, Live More podcast.

In this episode, he discusses planning for a post-lockdown future.

All of Rangan Chatterjee's books are available as both eBooks and audiobooks in our eLibrary

Now in the eLibrary

There's lots of science fiction to enjoy in our eLibrary, from classic series like Isaac Asimov's Foundation novels to recent bestsellers like The End of the World Running Club.

Not a member yet? To access our eLibrary for free, and to join Sheffield Libraries ahead of the introduction of our Order and Collect service, click here.