How to Fall in Love with the Future: A Time Traveller's Guide to Changing the World

by Rob Hopkins

There are an infinite number of possible futures that lie ahead of us—like threads stretching out into the distance. Rob Hopkins, cofounder of the international Transition Network movement, invites us to travel to future worlds we would actually want to live in.



In 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted every aspect of daily life, climate activist and Transition Network cofounder Rob Hopkins responded the way a lot of people by starting a podcast. But it wasn’t any ordinary podcast. In each episode, Hopkins and his guests would “time travel” together to the year 2030—walking down imagined future streets, talking with imagined future neighbors, visiting imagined future local businesses. While Hopkins’s guests came from all walks of life—economists, politicians, bakers, comedians, novelists and more—they all shared a willingness to suspend their worries about the future long enough to mentally inhabit and then describe a world they were thrilled to be a part of.



What Hopkins discovered was no less this simple exercise of visiting a positive future forced him to rethink the work he’d been doing as a climate activist for decades.



How to Fall in Love with the Future is the result of that radical disruption—and Hopkins’s deep dive into the people and movements throughout history who have used visions of the future to inspire positive change on a large and dramatic scale. From the life and writings of musician Sun Ra and the history of Black utopian movements to the latest neuroscience on what goes on in our minds—and hearts—when we “time travel,” Hopkins brings essential new thinking to anyone overwhelmed with dread and anxiety for the future. He asks us to what would the world look like if we all got to work imagining—and then building—a world we were deeply in love with?



“Rob Hopkins puts imagination back at the heart of future-dreaming, offering us an irresistible invitation to dream bigger and then make those dreams a reality.”—Kate Raworth, author of Doughnut Economics

Genres: Nonfiction, Environment, Audiobook, Ecology, Nature, Society, Politics

192 pages, Hardcover

Published September 16, 2025

About the author

Rob Hopkins did his permaculture design course in 1992, and around the same time saw Bill Mollison lecture in Stroud, and both of these things dramatically changed his life. He became involved in the Bristol Permaculture Group, and at the same time did a degree in Environmental Quality and Resource Management at UWE Bristol. His dissertation, ‘Permaculture - a new approach for rural planning’ is on his website. He moved with his family to Ireland, where he began teaching permaculture and laying the groundwork for the ecovillage development he wanted to undertake.

He set up Baile Dulra Teoranta, the first company granted charitable status for an eco-village development in Ireland. In September 2005 he moved to Totnes in Devon, to begin a PhD at Plymouth University looking at Energy Descent Action Plans, refining the model in such a way that they can be done anywhere.

Reviews

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this book up on a whim at a bookstore — I just liked the title and cover. I didn’t realize it was about environmentalism, which is actually something I really care about. It’s all about imagining a positive future so we can actually act toward it instead of getting stuck in negativity. As someone who’s always been a bit of a futurist, I loved that message. It made me want to be braver and bolder about helping shape what comes next.

[Katie Griffin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really excited to read this one, even more so after the first two chapters. But then things took a turn, becoming little more than piecemeal examples of people and organizations creating visionary shifts through various executions in different communities. While a lot of these examples were important and interesting to learn about, the book lost its guiding thread for me and no longer felt relevant or substantial. It was definitely optimistic and had a lot of useful and joyful moments, but I ended it feeling unsure of the takeaway. If it really was simply a how-to on designing a Time Machine workshop on climate-positive futures with scattered inspirational examples, well ok then, checkmark. I was hoping for a lot more from this book, and it never got there.

[Daisy]

Questions we don't ask ourselves enough: what does the past smell like? Taste like? What about the future? There is something about smell that really grounds you in a specific time and place.

***

Initially, I almost put this book down. It reads like an instruction manual with a clear message and doesn't really provide me with any new information. More cynically, there is still (and there always will be) a part of me that finds this kind of narrative to be hopelessly naive... but I stuck with it, and I think what it does offer is a fresh perspective.

There is a lot of doomerism these days—and for good reason. Our hope has been weaponized against us as a kind of cruel optimism, and it can feel like the logical outcome is to treat our imaginations as a rich man's luxury, an outdated relic that can not survive the modern demands on our productivity. But I think it is human to still want to be brave enough to dream of something different, and that there is a power in collective longing and working together. So often we mistake pessimism and cynicism for realism, when sometimes this defeatism is really just a lack of imagination for something different than what we were sold.

To be clear, he is not just advocating for dreaming aimlessly, but for dreaming with an action plan. But what dreaming can do is provide a freedom to envision alternatives, of seeing the artificial barriers in our world as the man-made and fallible things that they are. What has been made can be unmade and remade. Dreaming of solutions is an act of creation, of a desire to live, instead of a suicidal acceptance of the status quo towards inevitable collapse. This book makes a great case for things that seemed "impossible" in the past (like less car-dependent cities) that are already working, and just need more of a push for mass adoption. I hope he is right... or, rather, I have a longing for a world in which we are right.

Like anything worth fighting for, there is always risk, especially the risk that the future will be colonized (again) by the dreams of a few powerful men. But as one of the best would say:

"We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words."

- Ursula K. Le Guin

[Debs Erwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're demoralised by all the bad news in the world, then this is such a tonic as well as a compelling and inspiring call to action. What's more, I can honestly say that Rob Hopkins is the real deal having been fortunate enough to attend one of his 'How to Fall in love with the Future' trainings last week. Unlike many leaders who get a bit 'precious' about their intellectual property Rob's book - and workshops - focuses on equipping people to take these very practical ideas and interactive activities and run with them. Power to the imagination for a better world for us all!

[emma de Haan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zo verrukkelijk om je de gedroomde toekomst van deze planeet en haar bewoners in te beelden.

Wat zie je, wat hoor je, hoe ziet de straat er uit, waar zijn de auto’s, hoe is al het groen, hoe zijn de mensen?

[Theo Silberston · Rating 3 out of 5]

I actually have to meet this bloke. Recommend!

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful book. I listened to the audiobook, which is read by the author. He’s a great reader, but I need to buy a copy, reread it and mark it up.

[Ksenia Naydenova · Rating 5 out of 5]

"We wasted so much energy but the movement began to grow that saw cynicism as undesirable, something that robbed us of energy and abilities. I look back and I’m so glad that those days of cynicism are behind us. I feel like we were a part of generation that had to decide to be cynical or we can try to solve problems. So we became a generation that realized that our future depended on each other. And that became our guiding start."

[sal Latimer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice, optimistic read which - as he points out - is rare and needed these days. I got the book at an event he spoke at in Copenhagen, and I must say as a once activist turned apathetic person, I found him able to break my apathetic ice a bit, and that was really powerful. His message in the book is that we need to create a collective longing again for a better future, and stop consuming so much dark and doominess. I found all the examples he gave inspiring, but I'm docking one star just because I think it would have been interesting to dive a bit deeper into the historical movements that did overcome impossible odds - civil rights movement as one example. Overall I think you can feel the emotion behind his words and I take my hat off to him for being able to stay committed to the cause despite the state of the world. I loved his concept of filling up your mental cupboards with more positive 'memories' of the future. Inspiring guy - we need more like him to break through the mainstream!

[Vicci Divine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was in a slump thinking wise and this book shifted me into focusing forward and not so much on the past or the present. Lots of climate and environmental references which I will admit I don't think about as much as I should but I loved the reference of gardening/farming as belief in the future. Hopkins gives formula for others to create space to travel into the future as a community event. I listened to this book but would probably purchase it because of the sheer amount of names he dropped that I would want to refer back to and explore further. This book really challenged me to practice time traveling and using my imagination more.

Such a random yet timely read.

I gave it a 5 because I've already told a few people about it and put his other book on hold. I'm eager to hear more of his thoughts.

[Michael Doane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rob Hopkins’ How to Fall in Love with the Future is a compelling call to action wrapped in imaginative storytelling. Using the inventive device of “time travel” to 2030, Hopkins invites readers to inhabit the futures they genuinely wish to live in, turning what could be an abstract exercise into a deeply practical one. I was struck by how he weaves together personal experience, historical examples from Sun Ra to Black utopian movements and modern neuroscience to explore how imagining better futures can reshape our present choices. The book is at once accessible, hopeful, and rigorous, offering tools for anyone seeking to confront climate anxiety and actively participate in creating a thriving, sustainable world.

[John Griffiths · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought the book after encountering the author running a workshop at Greenbelt arts festival in August 2025. I loved the positive way his workshopping changes the way you plan for an anticipate the future - not least because of the dystopia projected by the environmental protest groups at the moment. It is less about optimism but making small changes towards realisable futures which will accumulate. A great idea - I will be using the book to run workshops myself. There are examples of initiaitives which are similarly future changing but these often felt a bit utopian for me.

[Bellatuscana Bellatuscana · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was okay. The book less a compilation of futuristic scenarios and more of an implementation guide for organizations and thought leaders to take the initiative to have futuristic emporiums. This author made a point of how there are so many doom and gloom scenarios of what the future will look like, and how there is a need for optimism. It read more like a Masterclass of what Elon Musk already knows - I highly recommend it to anyone who is looking to take on more leadership positions.

[phloeby · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would ideally give this 3.5 cause it’s quite niche lol but I liked it! its really changed the way i think about activism and change, the positivity of it has given me a little January spring in my step which the lord knows we all need. But - and i say this with love as a boring and repetitive person - it is at times a little boring and repetitive. And it does feel like it’s made for facilitators of workshops but tbf i am a facilitator of workshops lol so it was useful for me!!!!!!

[Jean Burke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great! Wonderful. What we need!
Some inspiring quotes: One of the reasons why mental simulations of the future matter so much…is that it becomes..a memory tucked away and encoded in our long-term storage. ….called ‘memories of the future’. P36

Gleick writes, ‘When Wells in his lamp-lit room imagined a time machine, he also invented a new mode of thought.’
‘ …tapping into the power if time travel…is one of the most powerful tools we have for suspending disbelief - for undermining, as American writer and activist Patrick Reinsborough puts it, ‘the status quo’s grand bluff: inevitability’. P47

‘In Joanna Macy’s powerful exercise ‘A Council of All Beings’. Participants each took on the role of a different animal or other non-human being and made a mask to represent their creature. They then all met at a council where they discussed how the actions of human beings are impacting their existence. P112
From J Macy & My Brown, Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World (New Society Publishers, 1998).

[Mahima Senthilkumar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loved the idea and even teared up listening to some of the early chapters. But for all its talk of the importance of an immersive experience, all of that falls apart in the second half of this book. It slips from being a piece of utopian writing into serving as an instruction manual.

[Maria · Rating 2 out of 5]

This popped up in my friends' feed and the idea of imagination as a means to cause action sounded very nice. Howerver, I felt very disappointed. Maybe my expections were too high, but I found it to be mostly hand waving and conceptually thin and repetitive.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

exceptional....now obsessed with building a time machine!

[Vera · Rating 4 out of 5]

Indispensable para estos tiempos donde la creatividad se ha reemplazado por la supervivencia. Inspirador y te ayuda a entender a la imaginación de mejores futuros como acto político.

[Francis Wight · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book and hope to return to it frequently. An optimistic and inspirational blueprint for facilitating grassroots change.

[Leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read for facilitators!

[Lauren Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another excellent book that left me feeling inspired and moved to think more about the preferable futures we need to bring about as communities and societies today!

[Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

While Hopkins isn't the most gripping of writers, the ideas and exercise of envisioning a better future feels essential right now. Recommend.

[Nel Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

more about how to run a workshop inspired by the ideas then the ideas themselves

[Esther Jones Russell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Became a bit repetitive but also the most inspirational, motivating, exciting, positive book I’ve read in years. Makes you think differently and want to make change.

[Olivia Critoph · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely enchanting book demonstrating the importance of a diversity of voices when time travelling :p

[Zoe · Rating 3 out of 5]

inspiring message and great examples. it made me excited to implement future thinking into my life. But the repetition made the reading experience a bit tedious at times.

[Milagros · Rating 4 out of 5]

Muy inspirador! una dosis de optimismo 🙂

[Aaron Krishna · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is my bible

[Emma Durand · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn’t connect with this book like I had hoped