Science fiction predictions for the year 2012 range from apocalyptic to upbeat:

• An evangelical preacher will be elected President of the United States.
• The U.S. economy will collapse.
• The zombie apocalypse will begin.
• The zombie apocalypse will end.
• The Doctor (as in Doctor Who) will light the Olympic Flame.
• Conan O’Brien will lose his freakishly long legs.
• The maximum height of all humans will be legally reduced to four feet.
• A proto-Martian biosphere will be completed in Indiana.
• Terrorists will attack the burgeoning transhumanist movement.
• Mainland Europe will be at war with England and the U.S.
• Atlantis will be rediscovered.
• Aliens will start to colonize the Earth.
• The world will end. (Yes, this is the big one, the most common fictional outcome for the coming year. Maybe it will end in a blockbuster-worthy series of disasters straight out of Roland Emmerich’s 2012 or The Asylum’s 2012 trilogy. But maybe, just maybe, the end of our world will look more like Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles, where humanity moves on to the next phase of our existence. Then the world would end not with a bang, but with a transcendence.)