The Future We Wish We Had

Introduction

Rebecca Lickiss

I remember watching the lunar missions on TV. Men landing and walking on the moon, collecting rocks and dirt, jumping around and having fun in their lunar buggy. It was exciting, thrilling, breathtaking, and inspiring. I remember one night looking up at the moon and thinking someone was up there, looking back at me. Probably they were busy elsewhere, or whatnot, but let’s go with it.

Then and there I promised myself that someday I would live on the moon. It didn’t seem such an impossible dream. All the science fiction that I read clearly implied that the future would hold wonders of technology that would revolutionize our lives, change the way we understood and interacted with each other, and help us to achieve the ideals of freedom and equality and prosperity that would make the world a better place. After all, why would anyone go to the trouble of getting to the moon, and then stop?

Sadly, but I’m sure not surprisingly, I don’t live on the moon, and there’s very little chance I ever will. Someone, somewhere along the line didn’t keep the implied promise of the future.

You know that future: the one where we all have some form of flying transportation, flying cars or jet-packs, and no one has to cook or do any of the boring housework that everyone hates. Everyone is smart; probably, we’re all scientists. Everything is all shiny chrome and sleekly aerodynamic.

Well, here we are in the future. Shiny chrome and sleek aerodynamics come and go as design fashions. We didn’t get our flying cars, but the entertainment possibilities today are staggering. We have music on demand, and we’re able to hear music seemingly minutes after it has been recorded. Also, there are some home theater systems that rival small theaters, without the overpriced snacks. Phones everywhere we go, which is becoming annoying.

It is interesting and exciting in its own way, but not exactly what I was expecting. Probably not what you were expecting either. Everyone had their own expectations-their own idea of what should and shouldn’t be. Which is why we get what we have.

Gathered here are sixteen stories of what this future we have now, and will have tomorrow, might have been. Could have been. Maybe still will be. Or maybe even one we’re glad is not.

I hope you enjoy these stories as much as I did. I hope they make you as nostalgic for the future that could have been as they have made me.