This Used To Be The Future

Do you ever dream of an optimistic, good old-fashioned future of endless technological progress? The sort of techno-gee-whiz optimism that science fiction used to be known for? The Hugo Gernsback let’s-solve-all-our-problems with-a-gadget-philosophy? Then you should pick up The Wonderful Future That Never Was, a fascinating, well-illustrated, and beautiful book reprinting the future predictions made by Popular Mechanics from 1903 to 1969. The illustrations are high quality reproductions from the magazine, and are worth the price alone.

I've kind of had it with Mars, and I've totally had it with NASA. I was two when we landed on the Moon, five when we abandoned it, and I was *supposed* to be fourteen when we landed on Mars. They promised.

In fact, they were lying: the 1970 Mars plan (Spearheaded by Spiro Agnew, and very feasible) was DOA as soon as it hit the press. For whatever reason, just six months after Armstrong and Aldrin, public opinion had switched to "Let's fix all the problems on earth, and then go into space in a century or three," mode.

Stupid hippies.

Everybody knows that Epcot was originally intended by Walt Disney to be an actual living, working town. Most, if they think of it at all, tend to write it off as one of crazy Unkie Walt's whacky Futurian daydeams that never would have come off, and now we've got "Celebration," and that's just as good, right?

Been a while since we've done "Disney Space" stuff, so check this out.