5 March 2014

Birthdays
Jake Lloyd b. 1989 (Star Wars: Episode 1: Don’t Make Me Type the Name)
Riki Lindhome b. 1979 (Big Bang Theory, Buffy)
Jolene Blalock b. 1975 (Legend of the Seeker, Starship Troopers 3: Marauder, Star Trek: Enterprise, Stargate SG-1, Jason and the Argonauts [TV])
Eva Mendes b. 1974 (The Spirit, Holy Motors, Ghost Rider, Mortal Kombat:Conquest [TV])
Matt Lucas b. 1974 (Alice in Wonderland [2010], Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire, Shaun of the Dead)
Paul Blackthorne b. 1969 (Arrow, Warehouse 13, The Dresden Files)
Aasif Mandvi b. 1966 (The Last Airbender, Jericho, Spider-Man 2)
David Fury b. 1959 (writer/actor, Fringe, Terra Nova, Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog, Lost, Angel, Buffy)
Adriana Barraza b. 1956 (Thor)
Samantha Eggar b. 1939 (The Astronaut’s Wife, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Demonoid: Messenger of Death, The Brood, Doctor Doolittle [1967])
Dean Stockwell b. 1936 (The Dunwich Horror [2009 and 1970], Battlestar Galactica, Stargate SG-1, Star Trek: Enterprise, Phenomenon: The Lost Archives, CQ, They Nest, Sinbad: The Battle of the Dark Knights, The Langoliers, Lois & Clark, Quantum Leap, The Twilight Zone [1989 and 1962], Dune, The Boy with Green Hair)
James Sikking b. 1934 (Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Outland, The Incredible Hulk, The Bionic Woman, Man From Atlantis, The Terminal Man, Six Million Dollar Man, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, The Invaders, My Favorite Martian, The Outer Limits)

I'll admit it. Yesterday's birthday list was lacking in star power, but today's is much better. Last year, I had Jolene Blalock in the Picture Slot, both a fabulous babe and a regular on a Star Trek series. This year it's Dean Stockwell, a long career, a well-known face and a lot of his most memorable work in genre. I don't know who will get the Picture Slot next year, but it's probably not the youngest person, for reasons I don't think I need to explain.

Many happy returns to everyone on the list, all of whom are still alive. How about that? 
 

Predictor: T. Baron Russell in A Hundred Years Hence: The Expectations of an Optimist, published 1905

Prediction: I do not think that people will, within the next hundred years at all events, travel to and from work in flying-machines… But, as a means of amusement, the idea of aerial travel has great promise. Small one-man flying-machines, or the aerial counterpart of tandem bicycles, will no doubt be common enough. We shall fly for pleasure; and just as thousands of working men and women now take a Saturday-afternoon spin on a bicycle, so they will go for a sky-trip, and visit interesting mountain-tops for (non-alcoholic) picnics. The bicycle or the motor-cycle will perhaps be the point of development.

Reality: This week's prediction is very close to one hundred eighty degrees from correct. People do travel to and from work on planes, though few commute every day this way. People do travel by air for fun, but planes aren't much like tandem bicycles or motorcycles with wings. A plane is too expensive for the average working person to have one for weekend joyrides. And then there's Russell's dislike of alcohol, which sneaks into this prediction. Our pal T. Baron also thought eating meat and even drinking coffee and tea would be on the way out by the 21st Century, and on these points he and I part company. In moderation and at their appointed hours, caffeine, animal flesh and alcohol are among mankind's greatest blessings.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

The new regular Thursday predictor Lee de Forest shows up for the second time, looking at the 21st Century from his vantage point in 1960.

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!

20 May 2013

Birthdays
Jack Gleeson b. 1992
Tahmoh Penikett b. 1975
Timothy Olyphant b. 1968
John Billingsley b. 1960
Anthony Zerbe b. 1936

From oldest to youngest, Zerbe was in The Omega Man, two of the Matrix films and one Star Trek  movie. Billingsley was Dr. Phlox on Enterprise. Olyphant is best known for Deadwood and Justified, but he was also in I Am Number Four. Penikett was on the reboot of Battlestar Galactica and Dollhouse.

I chose Jack Gleeson for the Picture Slot because I feel sorry for the lad. Now 21, his role as Joffrey on Game of Thrones is the biggest role of his short career so far by a country mile, and people hate the character with a white hot hate, as all right thinking human beings should. I worry that he might get typecast, but his current plans are to go back to school and study with hopes of entering academia. I hope this works for him. 

And as always, I wish all our birthday boys many more happy returns of the day. 

Movies released
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides released, 2011  

Prediction: "This simple, practical, foolproof personal helicopter coupe is big enough to carry two people and small enough to land on your lawn. It has no carburetor to ice up, no ignition system to fall apart or misfire: instead, quiet, efficient ramjets keep the rotors moving, burning any kind of fuel from dime-a-gallon stove oil or kerosene to aviation gasoline."

Predictor: Popular Mechanics magazine, 1951

Reality: Usually I ask for an exact date on a prediction, but I liked the history provided by Gregory Benford in the book that collected these pictures and texts The Wonderful Future That Never Was. Benford relates that helicopter commuting was relatively popular for a few decades, though not in personal copters, instead in short hop heli-buses. There were several crashes, many in Los Angeles and in the San Francisco Bay Area, but the most spectacular was in New York City on May 16, 1977, when a helicopter tipped over while landing on the Pan Am building, the rotors chopping people lined up to board, and then the helicopter hung from the side of the building and one of the rotors fell to the street below.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

Tomorrow's prediction is not from science or science fiction, but it is an exact date for the end of the world, so it gets a place on the blog.


(Spoiler alert: The date has already passed and we are still here.)

 
Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!

13 April 2013

Birthdays
Erick Avari b. 1952
Ron Perlman b. 1950

With today's choices of birthdays, the Pretty Girl rule is rendered moot, so I give the picture this year to Ron Perlman, who has had more roles near the top of the bill than Mr. Avari, who is also a terrific actor. In genre, Perlman's best known roles are his title characters, Beauty and The Beast on TV and Hellboy in the movies.

For anyone uncertain, on the TV show he was the second billed character, not the first. I have to say without any ill will, there is a line in the song Goin' Out West by Perlman lookalike Tom Waits that I think best describes him.

My friends say I'm ugly, I got a masculine face.

Many happy returns to both gentleman.

  

Prediction: In 1946, the United Kingdom goes to war with Nicaragua.

Predictor: Stella Gibbons in her novel Cold Comfort Farm, published 1932

Reality: Cold Comfort Farm may be the oddest piece of predictive fiction I have ever come across. Ms. Gibbons sets her story about twenty years ahead for just a few toss-off gags that are completely unnecessary to the plot.

The idea of the futuristic setting with several events that might surprise her readers is that the surprises are mostly noticeable in London but completely unseen in the countryside where most of the story takes place.  Besides the war, fashionable Mayfair has become a slum and Gibbons writes about TV phones and air-taxis, which sounds very close to flying cars, though they could just as easily be planes for hire.

Cold Comfort Farm is one of those odd pieces of fiction, a parody that is now more famous than the genre it originally set out to skewer. Many British works of fiction follow the hopeful young lady from a good family who has fallen on hard times, cast out to be taken in by odd relatives, usually living far out in the country. In the early 1930s, these books were waggishly called the Loam And Lovechild genre, owing a great deal to the writings of Jane Austen, the Bronte Sisters and Thomas Hardy, though most of the work of the late 1920s and early 1930s was not of the same level as literature. Ms. Gibbons makes her heroine Flora Poste not a helpless waif sure to be seduced and abandoned, but a charming young woman with nearly superhero levels of kindness and cleverness, much more like Jeeves than like Lizzie Bennett. Her own marital status is not a Problem To Be Solved in the book. Men fall all over her and she has no interest in picking any of them until she helped all the people she believed needed her help. As for being adorable, the 1995 version of the film had Kate Beckingsale as Flora, and in that era she was at the top of the Adorable Ingenue list in Britain at that time.

It should also be noted that in the 1995 film, the action takes place in the 1930s, not the 1950s and all the futuristic embellishments are completely ignored.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!



Instead of seeing what the early 1930s thought the 1950s would look like, we return tomorrow to our series written in 1988 looking forward to the wonderful advancements of... 2013!
 

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!

 

15 March 2013

Birthdays
Kellan Lutz b.1985

Mr. Lutz has been in the Twilight films, which kind of counts as genre. Looking for pictures of him online, it seems that getting cast in Twilight made it more difficult for him to advance in what would have been a promising career in gay porn.

 

In the year 2000!

Prediction: Fashionable people will have their own hot air balloons, perfect for those weekend outings.

Predictor: Hildebrands German Chocolate postcards.

Reality: This is very close to a flying car, and this blog has a policy about avoiding discussions of reality when flying cars are concerned.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE! The future of warfare is explained to stuffy scientist Alan Quatermass.

Join me then... IN THE FUTURE!

18 January 2013

 Birthdays
Jay Chou b. 1979  (Kato in the reboot of The Green Hornet)
Robert Anton Wilson b. 1932 died 1/11/2007
(never won a Hugo or Nebula)
(the blackballing bastards)

Okay, sue me. I liked his Illuminatus! books.

In the year 2000!

Last week, a 1900 German postcard imagined what it would be like if we had the power of flight. It was a world of pleasant weekend outings for well dressed people.

In this drawing from a 1900 French postcard, small flying hooligans are trying to steal eaglets from an aerie, beating back the understandably distraught mother eagle with a small stick.

This is just one of many of the French postcards that will make people who hate the French feel justified.


Looking one day... INTO THE FUTURE! Mind control becomes the seed for the apocalypse just around the corner.

Join me then... IN THE FUTURE!

11 January 2013

In the Year 2000!

Prediction: The personal flying machine will be a must-have accessory for the fashionable people.

Predictor: Hildebrand's German Chocolates in 1900. These antique postcards will be alternating with the French postcards for the first few months of the year. Not to give away too many secrets, but the German cards are drawn in a more realistic style and the French make a lot of assumptions that people in the future are going to be... well... incredible dicks, as you will see next week.

Accuracy: Okay, this is several years before the Wright Brothers, so the illustrator is forgiven for massively underestimating how much wing and how much energy it would take to get people aloft. But given how close this concept is to flying cars, it would be against the blog policy to make any further comment on how close this is to reality.

Looking one day... INTO THE FUTURE! An exact date for a famous invention!



"Professor?" pipes up a Hypothetical Question Asker. "Could you give us slightly more information that will be understood by all your readers?"

I'm afraid I can't do that... Dave.

To learn all the fascinating details, join me then... IN THE FUTURE!