The Wonderful Future That Never Was: Flying Cars, Mail Delivery by Parachute, and Other Predictions from the Past (Popular Mechanics) [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

There aren't that many retro-futurism books out there, at least ones that are accessible to your average lay reader. The Wonderful Future That Never Was is one of the best. It provides a nice comprehensive compendium of the various predictions that people were making decades ago about what life would be like in the year 2000. Some have turned out to be true - although not necessarily in the manner predicted - and others have been wayyy off the mark.

A few things that set this book apart from the rest:

1. Specific years are included. This may seem like a small thing, but it's interesting to see how predictions differed from year to year, as opposed to having some vague statement of what things were like in the 1930s as a whole. The way this book is formatted, we have little blurbs and paragraphs talking about the various predictions, with the specific year in which said prediction was made.

2. There is hardly any "hindsight is 20/20" bias. It's all too easy for us to mock the 'out there' predictions of the future*, e.g. "LOL, they thought we'd be wearing skinsuits and living in domed cities?? Idiots!" So I appreciate the author's restraint here. While the book does present an introduction to each chapter, most of the predictions themselves are presented without any outside commentary. Consequently, we can judge and see the predictions for what they actually are, instead of being unduly swayed by the author's own biases. The Wonderful Future That Never Was feels a lot less patronizing than a lot of other books on the same subject.

3. Plenty of pictures included! They're nice and large too. Easy to view.

If you are interested in this subject at all, I strongly recommend getting this book.

* As Gregory Benford writes on page 10: "Predictions might be more restrained and subtle today, but that doesn't mean they're better or more accurate. They're just more recent, so we think they're hip, knowing, aware. Beware our prejudice in favor of what's recent - history doesn't only repeat itself, it sometimes stutters."

One of the editorial mainstays of the monthly hobbyist magazines like Popular Mechanics and Popular Science was the blending of the future with the present. Every issue had pages of DIY things for the craftsman, usually in the back half of the magazines, before that there were pages and pages of new developments in science and products and how they related to Mr and Mrs Average and their families. Anything to do with transport and speed was heavily featured. The pages of the book pick out the scientific predictions over several decades divided into six chapters.

I thought it was interesting that the earlier predictions, in the first two and a half decades of the last century, really were rather fanciful based on fairly simple scientific principles. In the thirties with the huge increase in new products and developments (and during the Depression, too) the predictions became more tempered and practical. By the late forties and during the fifties the future projections were much more based on reality. Actually a reasonably accurate way of predicting the future was developed in the fifties by the Rand Corporation, called the Delphi Technique. Experts in various disciplines answered questions anonymously and the answers were blended together to created a reliable future projection for all sorts broadly scientific activity. The predictions in this book, of course, don't have that kind of credibility.

I thought chapter two `Home, sweet home of tomorrow' the most interesting with its mixture of ideas, a lot of which certainly came true because we all live with them now. Included are predictions for the picture phone (1956) prefabricated housing (1922) plastic and synthetic materials for house building (1937) clothing made from casein, a milk derivative (1929) air-conditioned homes (1944) frozen dinners (1947). Fortunately dresses from asbestos (1929) and aluminum (1929) never made it.

The text is a fun read and quite though provoking in parts but I wish the look of the book was equally as fascinating. It should have looked good because Popular Mechanics had wonderful cover paintings, right up to the late sixties when photos finally took over. The illustrations and photos used inside the magazine always tried to put across an idea as simply as possible. Unfortunately all this wonderful graphic imagery is more or less ruined throughout the book. Cover paintings have been hopelessly enlarged and then cropped with caption panels superimposed on them. This also applies to images that appeared inside the magazine. Photos are printed in blue, brown, green or red, over-enlarged and again with captions overprinted. It seems to me that the pictures are just used as graphic items to fill up the pages in a rather heavy handed manner with no thought given to displaying them to their best advantage.

If only more thought had been given to the editorial presentation the covers and illustrations could have really made the book sparkle. Yesterday's Tomorrows: Past Visions of the American Future covered the same idea with words and pictures but looked so much better and even Future Perfect (Icons Series) a small paperback full of color pictures looks better than 'The wonderful future that never was'. Incidentally the tacky looking cover design will give you some idea about the look of the book.

###LOOK AT SOME INSIDE PAGES by clickin 'customer images' under the cover.

In short?
Amazing hardcover book with the right production values and colors to bring years of Popular Mechanics to life with all those FUTURISTIC Gizmos and Gregory Benford--who should be named King of the Editorial Side Of All Compilations.
Buy it.
Plunk it on the back of your Throne or on the coffee table and read at leisure.
When you are done--someone ought to take the time to build a few of these for mass-production. There were some grand ideas!