The Ultimate Book of the Future: Excerpt & Giveaway!

Welcome to the Ultimate Book of the Future Blog Tour!

Ultimate Book of the Future by Stephanie Warren Drimmer is perfect for fans of sci-fi, budding engineers and scientists, lovers of futuristic movies and pop culture, and anyone who has ever dreamed about what tomorrow might look like. To celebrate its release, 5 blogs across the web are featuring posts from the book as well as 5 chances to win. Ready to sneak a peek at your life in the future? Read on!

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COULD JURASSIC PARK COME TRUE?

In the Jurassic Park Films, hapless humans run from real-life monsters: enormous T. Rex and packs of vicious velociraptors with gnashing teeth and tearing talons. Of course, these animals have been extinct for millions of years. But is it possible that, like in the movies, we could really bring them back to life someday? And what would a real Jurassic Park be like to visit?

FROM DNA TO DINO
In Jurassic Park, scientists re-create dinos using dinosaur DNA they find in blood sucked up by an ancient mosquito preserved in amber. Scientists say they do sometimes find biting insects preserved inside amber, or fossilized tree sap. But when insects become encased in amber, their blood isn’t preserved, just their hard outer bodies—so this method most likely wouldn’t work in real life.

But there might be other ways for scientists to get their hands on dino blood. In 2015, researchers examined fossilized bones from Cretaceous-era dinosaurs and found what they think are fragments of blood cells. There was no DNA, however, which breaks down quickly when exposed o sunlight and water. In fact, the oldest DNA discovered so far is less than a million years old, and dino DNA would have had to survive for much longer—at least 66 million years. So using DNA to re-create the dinosaurs is probably impossible. But scientists keep looking, just in case.

FEATHERED AND FLASHY
If future scientists do somehow solve the problem of how to bring dinosaurs back, where would we put them? Paleontologist Jack Horner, the science adviser for all the Jurassic Park films, has a few ideas. Unlike in the films, a dinosaur park wouldn’t need tall fences and super strong gates. Instead, dinosaurs could probably live on protected areas of land, much like where elephants and lions now live in Africa, says Horner. Many dinosaurs were peaceful plant-eaters, and watching them in the wild probably wouldn’t be too different from hanging out with a herd of antelope. Of course, some, like velociraptors, were hunters—but like lions on the Serengeti, they would be unlikely to attack humans.

And those dinosaurs would likely look very different from their movie versions. Scientists once thought that dinosaurs were covered in scales. But they now know that many species were probably covered in feathers—just like their descendants, modern-day birds. And some scientists think these dinos were not dull green and brown, but fantastically colorful. In 2010, scientists found evidence that a kind of dinosaur called Sinosauropteryx sported a tail ringed in bands of orange and white feathers. That’s nothing like the movie monsters!

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Buy

Robot dogs! Jet packs! Cyborgs! Super-sleek space suits! It’s not science fiction, it’s science reality. And soon, it may be part of everyday life. This book is a jam-packed collection of the coolest tech and wildest ideas that are shaping the world of tomorrow.

Blast off for an unbelievably fascinating journey through time, space, and even a holographic pop concert (or two)! With chapters on future cities, space travel, high-tech entertainment, and even saving the world, Future World is a thorough, fun compendium of high-tech gadgets being built today and the coolest stuff tomorrow has to offer, plus the amazing dreamers making it all happen.

Special “Could It Happen?” features tackle kids” burning hypothetical questions, like whether Jurassic Park could really exist, or whether a robot could become president. Each chapter also includes a “Future Fail!” that profiles one thing we thought we’d have by now, but don’t (like everything from The Jetsons.) And kids will see where they might fit into the picture through the “Jobs of Tomorrow” profiled in each chapter. (Job titles include mind reader, space pilot, and robot-human communicator. Seriously!)

Website

Stephanie Warren Drimmer is a science writer based in Los Angeles, California. She writes books and magazine features for kids about everything from the strangest places in space, to the chemistry of cookies, to the mysteries of the human brain. She has a degree in science journalism from New York University…but she thinks she likes writing for kids because she’s secretly still one herself.

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GIVEAWAY

• One (1) winner will receive a hardcover of Ultimate Book of the Future
• US/Can only
• Ends 7/5 at 11:59pm ET
• Enter via the Rafflecopter below
• Visit the other stops on the tour for more chances to win!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

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Blog Tour Schedule:

June 20th — YA Book Nerd
June 21st — The Mommy Island
June 22nd — Always in the Middle
June 23rd — Susie’s Reviews and Giveaways
June 24th — Feed Your Fiction Addiction

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