Beam me up, Scotty!In the 1970's there was a magazine,
TREK, which was for hard-core fans of the television show
Star Trek. How hard core? They had an article,
A Star Trek Needlepoint Design, for those who wanted to make a sampler with quotes from the series.
That magazine appears to have ceased publication a long time ago, but recently I came upon three old paperbacks,
The Best of TREK, volumes 1, 2, and 3. Took a look and found some of it interesting, but much that was dull (e.g. they speculate on whether a
Star Trek movie will ever be made).
One article from the magazine that made it into volume 2 of the best-of paperback was this:
The Rise of the Federation. The author, Jim Huston, writing no later than 1979, gives readers a "history" for 1980 to 2038 (during which many events take place, mostly on earth) that apparently leads to the situation in the
23rd century which is the period when the action in the original television series is supposed to take place.
The article is severely incomplete, in that only a tiny fraction of time from 1980 to 2254 is covered. In a note to readers, the editors promise a follow up "history" in volume 3, but that isn't honored.
Anyway, with that background information out of the way, the reason for this post is to look at selected events that were forecast back in 1979. Somebody once said that nothing ages fast than "the future" and that's certainly true in this case. But it's still interesting and amusing to see what one person, over 25 years ago, was proposing for the future (admittedly, with an optimistic science-fiction bias).
Here then, are selected excerpts from the "history":
- 1980 : First space shuttle flights
- 1982 : Construction begins on Starlab, the first permanently manned space station.
- 1983 - August : The United States, Russia, England, France, Germany, Japan, and Australia begin construction of a permanent base on the Moon.
- 1984 : Starlab completed, full operations begin. Agricultural experiments are added to Moon Base One.
- 1986 - July : The first manned Martian mission is launched from orbit around the moon.
- 1989 : Construction is started on the giant spaceship Martian Genesis, planned to carry over 1,000 people ... who will begin the task of making the Martian surface habitable for man.
- 1991 to 2000 : Mankind enters what appears to be a golden age. Due to the technology developed in the colonization of the Moon and Mars, the standard of living goes up radically the world over.
- 2006 : Man now has a foothold on most of the inhabitable planets in the solar system. ... Advances in weather-control techniques and the influx of foodstuffs from the space stations have ended Earth's food problems. The standard of living throughout the world has never been higher. Power and raw materials are abundant ... ... Major wars, which a few short years ago seemed unavoidable, are now unthinkable.
- 2019 : Germany becomes a whole nation again ...
No Y2K bug in this guy's future.
How about those "advances in weather-control techniques"? Somebody tell Al Gore!
China? India? Never heard of 'em.
Peak Oil? Not a problem. "Power and raw materials are abundant ..."
And it's nice to see that wars are unthinkable in 2006.
A scan of page 169
posted by Quiddity at 7/10/2006 11:15:00 PM
Now to show off my own Geek Cred - this author is ignoring Trek history, since the period you're quoting is the time of the Eugenics Wars, when dictators like Khan (KHAAAAN!) were causing havoc in the late 20th-early 21st centuries. Some hardcore magazine, ignoring basic Trek lore...
And before you start telling me to leave my mother's basement and take off the Spock ears, I'm married, with a kid, and I never dress up for cons. :P
What's funny is they think that a moon base can be built in only a year.
Robbie: I may have given a false impression. I only cited events that were basically, non-Trek. The article I read did mention a Kahn and somebody called Alex Charon who had something to do with a race of supermen (created by breeding "superbabies"). My guess is that the article is to some degree in accord with the Official Storyline, but I'm not an expert in these matters.
I'd call myself a moderate fan of the television series (except for DS9 and Voyager). My main interest in this post was the interesting "history" for the year 2006 as presented in the magazine/paperback. I skipped over most of the earth battles that take place around 2030.
The point was not to make fun of TREK, but that it was an excellent example of how forecasting the future can be full of pitfalls. The author sees Germany reuniting in 2019 - a full 30 years after it really happened. Back then, in the late 70's, the division of Germany must have looked like a near-permanent condition. And yet in a decade that situation ended. It just goes to show how the affairs of nations can be quite fluid and that one day you are armed to the teeth against someone, and the next day the situation can be radically changed.
It's true! It's all true! But the Bush hating media is hiding the good news from us, and focusing only on problems!
Brenda's post (which is very funny in a black humor sort of way)reminded me that I have always thought that the different sentient species on Star Trek were really all possible futures for humanity.
So, which one looks like our future now:
Ferenghis -- profit motive driven, run-away capitalists who believe nothing has value if you can't put a price tag on it.
Klingons -- Testosteron driven miliatarists with strong religious over tones.
Cardasians -- secretive, militaristic authoritarians.
Bajorans -- chip-on-their-shoulder martyrs, religio-fascists.
Vulcans -- cold, high intellectuals, who can't be bothered to run their stellar empire and so have to co-opt the Andorians and then the humans to do it (since the Andorians figured it out but the humans never did.)
Borg -- the "coming convergence", when media and computers are one and we can control everything with brain impulses and then we just become part of the machine.
I could go, on that was fun. Thanks.
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