Yesterday's Tomorrows: Past Visions of the American Future

Most books about past visions of the future deal with cities of the future, robots of the future and houses (or should I say kitchens) of the future. And this book DOES deal with those subjects and MORE. Between the covers of this book are plans for atomic powered cars, tanks, and bombers, the promises found within hobby magazines, chapters on the movies and radio shows that showed us the future, the designs for bomb proof cities and homes, hopes for the flying car, the idea for death rays, flying tanks and much, much more.Having been first published in 1984 it even hints at what visions we still believed in that would appear in our future, from the space shuttle to real laser weapons. Kind of fun but also kind of sad.

Yesterday's Tomorrows is a great, evocative book. Stemming from a traveling exhibit sponsored in Michigan by the Michigan Humanities Council, its retro-future images (comprised of period memorabilia, car designs, advertisements, and architectural wonders) are bountiful, crisply reproduced and accompanied by text that adds context to the visual journey.And what a journey! Travel back to an anticipated future when modernism and futurism were part of the manifest destiny of humankind. Employing an added bit of retrospective frisson, in the post 9/11 world, this mid-80s work now serves as a window on a future that would never be realized, of a time when people still dreamed of building towers to the sky. Thankfully, its unabashed message of near-limitless possibilities is conveyed utterly without irony. This volume can be enjoyed on so many levels. Delight in the visual salience of images gathered from dozens of rare sources. Lavish your attention on the many literary influences and how these images would inspire a whole genre of science fiction and futurist works, from Buckminster Fuller to Gene Roddenberry to Alvin Toffler.In this "shape of things to come," the future, our present, is always a golden destiny of exotic creative and technological evocations and innovations - even when the future is more dystopian than utopian.It is a reminder that hope and vision, art and science, are intrinsic to the human condition and surely the salvation for our own, as yet unwritten, future.

The pictures are what I loved the most. The text explaining the museum exhibit give insight and history that lend the photos and illustrations more weight out of context. I enjoyed this book, as have people I've lent it to.

Even though this book was produced to accompany a 1984 Smithsonian exhibition, it truly holds up as a worthy work in its own right. I can't recall seeing the subject of past speculation on the future handled better. It is done in a manner that is both scholarly and interesting. You get a balance of both the popular fictional conception of the future, as well as, more "official" versions from government and corporate think tanks.The real strength of the book is it's vast number of both color and black and white illustrations. You have everything from ink engravings from 19th century illustrated newspapers and penny dreadfuls, to the glorious 4 color covers of 1930's pulp magazines, to film stills of the "modern era" (Star Wars, Blade Runner, and Road Warrior.)I found the ideas in the insightful text most interesting. It is pointed out that the popular image of the past changes and evolves through time. The Victorians and Edwardians seem to assumed that the future would be much like their heirarchical and elite present, just with bigger buildings and more complex machines. The first half of the 20th century was driven largely by an utopian, often socialist, vision of a better future for all. However, the vision that seems to dominate the later half of the century is a grim, corporate, cyberpunk nightmare. As Arthur C. Clark points out in the text, the future isn't what it used to be.

"Yesterday's Tomorrows" is a look at how both popular culture and leading scientists, from the 1800s to the 1970s viewed the future. Joseph Corn and Brian Horrigan, using a variety of source materials, present these visions, both optimistic and grim, in a manner that avoids derision or arrogance. After all, some of these came true, and, in some cases, we wish the others had come true. But, as Corn and Horrigan point out, that's the beauty of the future: anything is still possible. The best way to explore how others viewed the future is through pictures, and this book has plenty. Corn and Horrigan draw on pictures, sketches and illustrations from magazines, TV shows, movies and books. While many of these visions, such as Buck Rogers' ray gun or a helicopter in every garage, are now nostalgic, many others, such as Buckminister Fuller's houses, still invoke wonder and awe. Corn and Horrigan provide a balanced approach to their theme by drawing from both popular culture and the scientific community's conception of what our life would be like. The book runs the gamut from future visions of cities, housing, transportation and warfare. Some ideas such as lasers have become commonplace while others like the flying tanks are prototypes that were passed over in favor of more practical options. But as the authors point out, who are we to judge these ideas from the vantage point of our time? Corn and Horrigan are careful not to poke fun at these concepts, but instead present them and explain their significance to the context of the times which produced them. Both fun and thought-provoking, this book is an excellent glimpse into not only the future, but into our dreams that make our tomorrows. Highly recommended.