Predictions for 2026

Predictions are a fool’s errand.

But, the more one reads, the stronger one’s power of insight. Reading choice works from bygone eras, we realise the times in which past authors lived are not too different to our own, besides the layer of technology and media that evolves, the density of people that changes, and periodic wars, natural disasters, revolutions, etc that roil society.

Fundamentally, the challenges of being human remain, and are interpreted through the experiences and stories of those who write and publish.

This week, Ink & Time provides our brief retrospective of the Top 9 books we profiled in 2025, extracting selected insights that give a glimpse into the year ahead.

We refrained from adding a percentage likelihood, as our predictions are not anchored on specific time-bound events. Rather, trends are emerging, from which some radical new developments may pop out.

We feel no pressure to get these “correct,” but it’s fun to connect the dots and take a punt with what we expect to come in 2026.

Enjoy, have a Happy New Year, and keep reading!

So-called “false flag” operations designed to appear as if they were carried out by other parties have led to intense debate in American discourse for over a century. They are an established political tactic with many precedents (Operation Northwoods, Gulf of Tonkin, USS Liberty, etc), despite often being associated with “conspiracy theories,” and deployed over time to manufacture consent for foreign military actions and domestic population control.

In The Iron Heel, Jack London’s darkly speculative political thriller in 1908 the ruling oligarchy employs a ruthless, multi-pronged strategy to retain power.

The legal system is manipulated on behalf of wealthy clients. Military force is expanded through conscription. Agents-provocateurs are used to incite premature or ill-planned violence, which provides a pretext for brutal suppression. The most dramatic example is the bombing in Congress. During a defiant speech from protagonist Ernest Everhard, a bomb explodes at his feet.

Was it the Revolutionists? Or a “False Flag” operation? Read it to find out.

Given the poisonous state of politics in the US, we should be prepared to see something unexpected before the US midterms in November. We are in uncharted territory, but on the other hand, the shocking developments of 2025 are unsurprising to those who read widely.

Click here to get your copy of The Iron Heel to get some urgent perspective. 

Relationships with AI chatbots are bound to get weirder. We humans are suckers for anthropomorphized technology, especially when it sounds like us, and is designed to replicate our personal fantasies.

This rather strange and dystopian situation was foreshadowed 100 years ago in the original symbolic novel Metropolis. 

In 2026, we will start to see this as problematic, not just some fast-spreading fad. Depending on how rapidly things degenerate, we’ll see movements to rehab those addicted to synthetic love. Here’s a free business idea: launch a chain of clinics to treat the hopelessly AI-Chatbot addicted. Perhaps it will be a combination of subversive AI companions and old-fashioned human coaches.

You’ll want to read how Futura, also known as The False Maria, the original deepfake seductress, was created to undermine a city on the brink. Her creator steals the likeness of the spiritual heroine who advocates on behalf of the underground workers.

The description of her otherworldly and irresistible seductive charm could be swapped out for our own AI companions in 2026.

Click here to get the new Time Warp Editions release of Metropolis 2026, in celebration of the book’s 100 year anniversary, and the arrival of the year in which the story is set.

With all the attention on the perils of generative AI, we’ve lost sight of the bigger existential threat of climate change and the erosion of the resource base that sustains all life, and all economic activity.

Unsurprisingly the threats to human existence have only become more dire. A recent study shows that 7 of the 9 Planetary Boundaries have now been breached.

In 2026, we’re bound to experience more shocking examples of climate change induced disasters: Floods, Fires, Desertification, Flora and Fauna Extinctions, and more.

Despite most of us having become somewhat desensitized to it, we need reminders. It’s time to revisit After London by Richard Jeffries from 1885, an early work of climate / disaster fiction, set in near future England, a century after a mysterious disaster caused the fall of modern civilization and reverted English society to the medieval level.

The first section is titled, “The Relapse into Barbarism.” Enough said.

Click Here for our overview from March 2025.

For all the hype around digital everything, including audiobooks and AI-generated content, printed books will continue to rebound strongly, as more of us grow tired of our devices, secretly dreaming to throw them in the ocean, but feeling we cannot because our life and work are so tethered to it.

Ironically, it is our devices, more than anything else, that have accelerated the shameful decline in literacy and the atrophy of our mental attention muscles. If this does not worry you, you’re not reading enough, and are likely already a victim of this degenerative trend. Stop scrolling, and start reading.

We profiled a classic debate about the future of reading from 1890 in September. 

Our view is that Uzanne and his intellectual buddies got it wrong in arguing for the “End of Books,” just as many analysts are getting it wrong today. 

Books will survive and thrive as a backlash to all things digital. We are here to help.

Click Here to read our profile of The End of Books by Octave Uzanne.    

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In the year ahead, resentment toward elites will become more inflamed, and may well boil over. As costs rise, inflation bites and social pressures increase, we’ll see new memes emerging reflecting the anger, and sharpened divisions between the haves and have nots. 

Useless billionaires will be skewered like Oblomov, the iconic “superfluous” feudal lord from late Feudal Russia of the mid-19th century. 

A new name will be created for our modern equivalents.  Wait for it.  

It’s not so much worth debating which country has the worst inequality. It is a function of late-stage global financial capitalism that a very thin slice of society owns more than the bottom 50%. It’s a recipe for social polarization, anger and backlash.

If you’ve never read Goncharov’s masterpiece, Oblomov you’re missing out.

It’s a beautiful human story that makes you fall in love with the charming anti-hero Ilya Ilyitch Oblomov, who just happens to also be an archetype representing the structure risks of entrenched unproductive privilege in society.

Click Here to get your copy from Time Warp Editions.  

In Albert Robida’s groundbreaking graphic novel from 1893, the masses who became burnt out by electrification, a new innovation at the time, seek retreat to low-tech national parks. 

Next year our digital fatigue will crescendo, and we’ll see increasing numbers of digital refugees trying to follow suit. Life online is just unnatural and increasingly nasty. 

We can expect new businesses emerging to serve the demand for disconnected spaces. Watch for more “dead zone cafes” and premium blackout resorts. Perhaps we’ll be able to pay someone to take our phone away from us for a period of time, sort of like childcare, but with mental health benefits.

Read The Electric Life, and check out the end of Part 2, Chapter 8, when “the angry people” descend onto the National Park for a glimpse of what’s to come.

Click here to order the first re-issued, new English translation of The Electric Life by Time Warp Editions.

Loneliness is reaching epidemic proportions. According to the World Health Organization, approximately one in six people worldwide experience loneliness, resulting in an estimated 871,000 deaths annually given as loneliness increases premature death risk by 26-29%.

In 2026 we’ll see new services emerging to address the crisis. These could range from Japan’s own innovative “Rent-a-Friend” model to AI/automated loneliness counsellors or some hybrid human-machine loneliness fix.

Chatbots are getting “smarter” and doubtless more tuned to the quirks of modern life. And if they are well read, which they are by definition, they will remind us that loneliness is not an aberration, but instead is a property of modern life.

This was the breakthrough idea first proposed in Japan’s most famous modern novel, Kokoro by Natsume Soseki.  

Click here for an overview and some fresh editions to choose from.  

2026 is shaping up to be the year when humanoid robots break through from speculative sci-fi to mass production and more visible public application. If you’ve been to China lately, you’ve probably seen prototypes stumbling around downtown areas and hotels and restaurants.

Some moderate forecasts for humanoid units up to 2030 are in the range of 195,000 to one million units annually.

Having read and re-published the book that coined the term “robot,” and contemplated the origin story of countless robot-apocalypse movie tropes, we feel secure in predicting that 2026 will be there year we start seriously considering what it means to be interacting with man-made beings who start to embody a new form of alien intelligence.

Airplanes don’t use the same mechanics as birds, but they fly.

Society is thus far totally unprepared for the legal, financial, safety, ethical, and dare we say humanitarian considerations that will come from the deployment of humanoids. Capek’s original automation drama started us all down the path of imagining industrial fleets of robots and what it might mean for us if/when they wake up and push back.

Click Here to grab a copy of RUR, released in late 2024 by Time Warp Editions.

The Return of Friction is a trend to watch. Smart cities, extreme immediacy and frictionless existence have limits. This recognition will start to hit home big time in 2026. How many will be both aware and able to resist? It’s an open question. Probably, few.

We have been seduced by the tech-enabled comfort and convenience narrative. We seem to have forgotten the fact that human existence is inherently messy and rough. 

This was the premise of Zamyatin’s pioneering dystopian novel We, where citizens enjoyed the ultimate mathematically-optimised life.

They traded freedom for happiness. They got pink coupons for pre-scheduled sex time. Some of them underwent an operation to remove imagination from the brain. Just stop dreaming for something else. 

Would you trade freedom for happiness? Have you already done so? 

If you’ve never considered it, it may be time to read We.  We are almost there and life in 2026 in some societies starts to feel like Zamyatin’s dark paradise.

Click Here for our overview from April 2025

Ink & Time wishes you a joyous and fruitful New Year 2026!

Stay in touch with us, let us know what genres you’re most interested in, and kindly share this with friends and family who would appreciate it.

Our goal is to inspire reading, and critical thinking and to bring back some of the best forgotten books in new modern editions that people will enjoy, and learn from.