Sometime in the fifties of the last century, a friend asked me what I would most wish for myself, if I had the choice.
Unhesitatingly, I replied that above all else, I would like to live until the year 2000, just to see what sort of miracles the world would then contain.
It seemed an unlikely prospect at a time when it was quite normal for a man to retire at 65 and be dead before 67. And when reaching anywhere above 70 earned the title ‘grand old chap’, ‘strong as an ox’,’don’t know how he does it’.
Why did I want to try?
The reason I so much wanted to try however, was that we had all just lived through five years in which – among the slaughter and destruction – we had gone from fabric covered biplanes to jet fighters, from incendiaries to the atomic bomb and from a bloke with binoculars standing on some clifftop peering out into sea-mist, to radar.
And, stimulated by all such wonders, our comics, books, radios, televisions and cinemas were ablaze with tales of marvels to come, fictional or otherwise.
Not much of the otherwise in truth, despite dear old Tomorrow’s World telling us of telephones were you could see as well as talk to someone right at the other end of the country, where the reel-to-reel tape recorders which were the latest scientific thing, would one day record moving pictures as well, where not only would every home own a TV set (yeah – I should coco!), but the programmes on them would be in full living colour, just like those huge-screen vistavision films becoming so common at the local picture palace.
Just good entertainment
We didn’t believe it of course, not really. Any more than we believed in those Americans boldly going where no man has been before, only to find when they got there, a whole bunch of folk all talking American and sporting top grade nylon had unboldly got there first.
It was all just good entertainment, like robots and space travel and cities under the sea.
Or cities floating free in space, with no means of support, for goodness sake!
And yet here I am, having positively jogged past 2000 and still (fingers crossed) going strong.
True, I had to be hauled in for a major artery scour-out, and the number of pills I have to swallow, make for a light repast on their own. Bur fit and alive I am.
The result of a science fiction development that even Doctor Who didn’t foresee.
Fantasy becoming reality
As for all the other feverishly imagined marvels, well they’re coming true as well. We may not yet be rocketing to other planets, but surely a private corporation offering to take anyone with sufficient loot on a pleasure trip into the realms of the airless is almost as unbelievable.
And if we don’t yet have cities floating endlessly on the oceans, we do have ever bigger cruise ships being constructed, finding less and less harbours able to accommodate them and offering such a complete package of living luxury that quite a few of the immensely wealthy now live permanently on them. Together of course with those hired to attend them.
With the climate change taking away more and more land suitable for us to use, it seems to me monstrous vessels, floating about with no fixed destination in mind will soon be commonplace.
Settling in the sea-bed?
Cities under the sea are rather harder to imagine perhaps. Yet we already have scientific establishments on the sea bed, as well as atomic submarines that can stay submerged for up to two years.
How long before some entrepreneur realises the potential of a resort positioned opposite a colourful reef and beyond the reach of tax-grabbing governments?
A city floating freely in space?
Which leaves us a with what must be surely the most ridiculous notion of all. A city floating freely in space.
I give you the International Space Station. A permanent site permanently occupied and supplied by a regular run of supply rockets, each one robot controlled.
What other evidence do we need to realise that Asimov, Clarke, Wells, Verne were not fantasists, but merely blokes telling us what is going to happen – if it hasn’t already?
If someone was to ask me now what I would most wish for myself, if I had the choice – guess what my answer would be.
Image: Brizzle Born and Bred under CC BY 2.0
