Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 14:16:28 -0400
From: "Michael Walsh" <MJW at press.jhu.edu>
To: <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Alternative reality v SF
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

> twhite8 at cox.net 4/28/2005 12:48:59 PM >>>

[snip]

>Pick up a copy of a 1929 or 1930 isasue of AIR WONDER STORIES
>(which later
>in 1930 merged with SCIENCE WONDER STORIES to become just
>plain WONDER
>STORIES) and check out the fantastic aircraft predicted for our future

>--
>which never actually occurred.

"Yesterday's Tomorrows: Past Visions of the American Future"

Enormous skyscrapers will house residents and workers who happily go
"for weeks" without setting foot on the ground. Streamlined,
"hurricane-proof" houses will pivot on their foundations like weather
vanes. The family car will turn into an airplane so easily that "a woman
can do it in five minutes." Our wars will be fought by robots. And our
living room furniture--waterproof, of course--will clean up with a
squirt from the garden hose.

In Yesterday's Tomorrows Joseph J. Corn and Brian Horrigan explore the
future as Americans earlier in this century expected it to happen.
Filled with vivid color images and lively text, the book is eloquent
testimony to the confidence--and, at times, the naive faith--Americans
have had in science and technology. The future that emerges here, the
authors conclude, is one in which technology changes, but society and
politics usually do not.

The authors draw on a wide variety of sources--popular-science
magazines, science fiction, world fair exhibits, films, advertisements,
and plans for things only dreamed of. From Jules Verne to the Jetsons,
from a 500-passenger flying wing to an anti-aircraft flying buzz-saw,
the vision of the future as seen through the eyes of the past
demonstrates the play of the American imagination on the canvas of the
future.

<http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title_pages/3085.html>

Has a Paul cover too.

mjw