I'd love to read some historical accounts of future predictions, both dystopian and utopian perspectives.
For example, what did people in the 19th. century think the problems of the future would be? In the 17th? American or otherwise. What kind of history is that? Social History?
Thanks, Historians!
To whet your appetite, here's one of the much purported relevant xkcds. Full disclosure, I haven't read all of these in their entirety, but for slightly more scholarly sources...
The Prophecies - Michel Nostradamus. The first stop on any tour of prediction literature. 16th century predictions based on "judicial astronomy", rather infamous for being pretty opaque and difficult to interpret.
Looking Backward, 2000-1887 - Edward Bellamy. This one is fiction, but if you want people making predictions about the future, look no further. 19th century vision of 20th century America as a socialist utopia.
Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind - Marquis de Condorcet. Another utopian piece, late 18th century. Condorcet writes about the perfectibility of the human mind and all the wonderful benefits that come with it.
On the Principle of Population - Thomas Robert Malthus. The basis of Malthusian population theories and the inevitable collapse of society, and how to stop it. A sobering response to Condorcet. Late 18th century, definitely more on the dystopian side.
The Population Bomb - Paul Ehrlich. Neo-Malthusian theories about population and how they'll inevitably destroy society. Mid-20th century, and definitely dystopian.
The Next 100 Years - George Friedman. Okay, this one breaks the 20 year rule (oops!) but it's a good capstone, predictions for the 21st century from the late 2000s. Some of the early ones for Europe are already starting to look a little accurate. Hard to classify as utopian or dystopian, but some of the outlook is pretty grim, for sure.
I've never come across a book that's dedicating to chronicling the history of future prediction, though admittedly I've never looked for one. There's a plethora on Nostradamus, at the very least. If you do find something that covers the history of these ideas, let me know - I'd love to read it. If you're looking form more primary sources like these, history isn't the place to look. It tends to be economists and social theorists who put out books like this.
Edit: Okay, I did a quick look around, but the number of books and journal articles out there with "future" in the title are innumerable. I did turn up this book: Predicting the Future, edited by Leo Howe and Alan Wain. It's a collection of essays inspired by a conference in 1995 on both the history of future prediction and how we do it now (or at least, how we did it in 1995).
There's a trove of source documents from the 1870s to the 1990s at Paleofuture. Interesting browsing, much of it from popular culture.