Book Review: Imaginable by Jane McGonigal

By Steph Clarke

It feels hyperbolic to say this, but this book might just change your life - or at least how you think.

This is not a book full of platitudes, or generic ‘advice’ that looks good on Instagram, or ideas co-opted from others and claimed as one’s own. It’s not ‘that’ kind of life changing. Instead, this is a book that will prompt and prod and provoke you to reimagine what you think the future might look and feel like.

Jane McGonigal is a game designer, researcher, author and the Director of Game Research and Development at the Institute for the Future (IFTF). Her third book, Imaginable, introduces readers to the tools of Futures Thinking to help them see possible futures based on the signals of today.

The tools are useful, but what will stick with you long after you close the book are the simulations. In 2008, IFTF ran a ten-day simulation set ten years in the future, about the impact of a respiratory pandemic that spread around the globe. This wasn’t coincidental sci-fi, but a simulation purposefully built around real signals and warning signs happening over a decade ago.

Fast forward to 2022 (when Imaginable was released) and some of the scenarios Jane and her team are thinking about include mass climate migration, radical geo-engineering action against climate change, and the eradication of waste. Importantly, these scenarios are based on real activities, decisions, innovations, and actions happening around the world right now.

Throughout the simulations you’re encouraged to consider how you would respond, what role you would play in these futures, and how your daily life might change. They are part-thought experiment, part-action catalyst.

In 2020, as the early impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic started to evolve, the people who took part in that 2008 simulation got in touch with Jane. They shared how much better prepared they felt for what was happening compared to their friends and family. This was despite the fact that the IFTF simulation was a fairly short experience they took part in 12 years earlier.



The purpose of this book is not to strike fear, but to help people better prepare for potential futures – to consider what action they might take, or conversations they might have to either help bring about desirable futures or prevent less desirable ones – and that feels like a pretty worthwhile reason to read it.