Expanded Universe

FOREWORD

Superficially this looks like the same sort of article as PANDORA'S BOX; it is not, it is fiction - written by request to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Amazing Stories. In PANDORA'S BOX I was trying hard to extrapolate rationally to most probable answers 50 years in the future (and in November1979 I gave myself a score of66% - anybody want to buy a used crystal ball with a crack in it?).

But in this short - short I wrote as if I were alive in 2001 and writing a retrospective of the 20th century. Of course everyone knows what happened in 2001; they found a big black monolith on Luna - but in 19561 didn't know that. So I wrote as far out as I thought I could get away with (to be entertaining) while trying to make the items sound plausible and possible if not likely.

Figures in parentheses refer to notes at the end.

"Has it ever occurred to you

that God might be a committee?"

- Jubal Harshaw