From: "Ted White" <twhite8 at cox.net>
To: "WSFA members" <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Alternative reality v SF
Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 20:53:14 -0400
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Walsh" <MJW at press.jhu.edu>
To: <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Sent: Thursday, April 28, 2005 2:16 PM
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Alternative reality v SF

> > 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.

*All* issues of AIR WONDER STORIES had Frank R. Paul covers.  Lovely
things.

--Ted White