Days of Future Past

I grew up during the space race, watching the progress of civilization on a small black and white television. Radio stations had their own news departments providing news and weather updates at the top of every hour. Reading was still the major source of information, from daily newspapers to weekly reviews. Magazines like Popular Mechanics and Science Digest predicted a utopian future with flying cars, robotic homes and tourists in space. And best of all, it was a golden age of science fiction with new paperbacks showing up at the dime store or the newsstand every week. Oh, and everybody wrote and received lots of letters, making writing a major means of communication.

While a nostalgia for that time influences my work, the excitement of the years since has not escaped me. I enjoy Punk Rock and Seattle Grunge; I watch commercial space travel with excitement and interest; I have traded in my old typewriter for a computer keyboard and my postage stamps for an email account.

There is so much the science fiction writers of the Fifties and Sixties got wrong in predicting the future, but there is so much they got right. I think that my ideas are often influenced by both the right and wrong. The whole point is asking "what if?"

It isn't easy to predict what will come next or when it will come. Will we still have computer screens a hundred years hence? Will we even have verbal communication? When I look back at how fast we've gotten to where we are, I find it breathtaking to imagine how far we will go.

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