Your Flying Car Awaits

November 2, 2009
There was a time when people thought future generations would be living in cities topped by geodesic domes, and that all babies would be born in mechanical incubators, probably after having their DNA selected for better intelligence or physical attractiveness. Milo explains why these and dozens of other predictions never came to fruition in a wide-ranging survey that covers everything from atomic energy (which some scientists predicted would never work out) to Puerto Rican statehood. Sometimes the wrong guesses even contradict themselves: airplanes would never work, conventional wisdom once ran; once they'd proven successful, people believed they'd be fast enough to cover the globe in mere hours. Milo's tone is amiably conversational, filled with casual asides such as the discovery that “the electric car was also the flavor of the month more than one hundred years ago.” He delves into the work of some famous visionaries, from Paul Ehrlich to Hal Lindsey but refrains from mocking even those who were completely off the mark. Readers will come away with a smattering of historical information in several scientific and cultural fields, but it's presented in such a way that they'll feel like experts.