A common mantra these days, when presented with the fact that we’re in (turn up that reverb) THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY is “where is my flying car?” Everyone was going to have a flying car: they were the staple of visions of the future, from A Brave New World to The Jetsons. And, on top of that, everybody wanted one. I wanted one — my basis was primarily the speeder bikes from Return of the Jedi — but, alas, only minimal progress as occurred, remaining the environment of experimental pilots, and there’s no real hope for them to appear in the near future. Even though the basic fear of running out of gas equals an unpleasant plummet to the ground, and nobody is thinking about giving a third axis of movement to drivers that have enough trouble in their 2-D ground cars, the flying car is still the primary transportation of (reverb again) THE NEAR, BUT PROBABLY BEYOND YOUR LIFETIME, VISION OF THE FUTURE. We’re optimistic because other things, like instant planetary-wide pocket communicators (cellphones), widespread on-demand data communications (the internet) and wall-sized video entertainment screens (I think that’s actually a Sony trademark) are already here. Scientists and inventors get a lot right, but a lot wrong…and a bunch that’s so suspiciously accurate that one wonders how they could be so right so far in the past. Other than science fiction, there was a lot of technological speculation in the past (and still going on); as a fan of the FUTURE THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE HERE, BUT JUST HOLD ON, WE’LL BE RIGHT WITH YOU, JUST GIVE US A FEW DECADES MORE, I like to archive those interesting, uncanny, and just strange predictions of the future past. If you can’t have your flying car, facelift in a pill, or pocket energy weapon, you can at least keep a record of where those ideas came from.

1. Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, and the like. Probably the most level-leaded, aside from #2, but the most approchable and easiest to collect. Much of these magazines was devoted to current technologies, or things already in development with a certainty of release, but quite often they looked beyond existing prototypes to the purely theoretical. Army rockets delivering jet-packed soldiers, 400mph inter-state subways, and various robot, laser, and microwave ideas and concepts. In the few examples I grabbed, some rather far-fetched for the 1950s ideas have come to be, such as programmable steering-wheel and pedal positions for various drivers (available on high-end cars today) and the ability to shoot down foreign satellites. For the most part, except for very exceptional issues, these magazines are low-cost and found many places. Buy them by the box and spend the night examining for predictions that never came to be. The further back in history to read, the more ‘absurd’ by modern standards they appear, because the science applied in 1960s science magazines is still relatively current — but if they thought something world-changing and profitable could be invented in the 1930s and it hasn’t been yet, there’s probably a good reason and a large flaw.

2. Scholarly Works 20-30 Years Prior. Much drier and less sound-bitey than the science magazines, these books tend to be eerily accurate even though they really don’t know what to name the things they’re describing. The speculative text in these books, written by professors and experts, tend to be vague enough to show that they aren’t willing to make absolute statements, but show a clear understanding of where technology is going at the time. Recent scholarly works are probably still rather current, so look to books from at least 20 years ago, prior to the internet, cable TV, and regular spaceflight. The further back you go, as with the science mags, the more ‘wild’ the predictions appear by modern standards, despite the clearly explained reasoning behind it. A drawback of these books is the time you’ll need to devote to absorbing the content; casual readers will likely be put off by the pages and pages of citations and examples. Also, these kinds of books may turn out to be fiction masquerading as truth — or they may be so philisophical and theoretical to cause loss of interest. The best examples of these books tend to be rare and spendy, but a sharp eye at the used book store can find some excellent examples of scholarly futurist works.

3. Children’s books, fiction and non-fiction. While most adult science fiction has fanciful technology designed to move the plot rather than being feasible, I’ve found quite often that children’s fiction tries to stay educational and tied tighter to science than other fiction. Then, on the other end, children’s non-fiction books tend to sway further into the more far-fetched science as a way of entertaining and keeping the attention of a child who might otherwise find the various methods of rocket engine construction less than riveting. As such, these can be excellent sources for simple, grand views of the future, illustration with lots of pictures and bright colors — and, really, isn’t that the future we’ve all been hoping for? The older the children’s book, the worse its condition will be, even moreso if it’s a particularly engaging book. The books devoted to space travel from the 1950s also tend to be more valuable to space-race collectors. Still, so many children’s books have been published that there’s a good likelihood of finding gems in a box of Dr. Seuss and Disney readers.

For those less booky than I, the speculative views of the future appeared in other formats as well: Viewmaster reels, educational videotapes, 8mm films of world’s fairs and Disneyland’s Futureworld, and coloring books. Besides imaginging fanciful things, we love to imagine what will be, even if it turns out never to be. I still might get a flying car someday — science tells me I’ll live to be several hundred years old — but no matter what powers my jet-bike, nuclear or ethanol, I’ll still have images of military troop-rockets and sky-toboggans to entertain me.

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Article Tags: 21st Century, future, Futureworld, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, space travel

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