Homo Deus
by Yuval Noah Harari, Harvill Secker, £25
This is Yuval Noah Harari’s follow-up to Sapiens, his much-praised “brief history of humankind”. The dust jacket of this book, subtitled A Brief History of Tomorrow, tells us that “Sapiens showed us where we came from. Homo Deus shows us where we are going.”
Homo Deus deals with an immense range of scientific, sociological, ethical and spiritual issues in its 440 pages, which are never ponderous or boring. Does it show us the future? Well, maybe, at least in part. Much is tantalising guesswork and possibility, and you cannot quite unscramble science fiction from scientific fact.
