Customer Reviews

Yesterday's Tomorrows: Past Visions of the American Future

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"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.

I agree with the reviewer below. It's one of the few books on this subject (I've only seen one other) so we have to live with it. On the other hand it's small, it's a bit scattered in its approach, and it feels like a museum gift-shop item/show catalogue of sorts. I would like to see someday a huge, profusely illustrated, and text-rich book on the complete history of portraying the future (positively) which is an historically recent phenomenon. It died probably around the time of the '64 World's Fair and depictions of the future since then have been largely dystopian. Nowadays they're downright awful. This is something we need to address because unless you can conjure up imagery of an upbeat future you're not likely to even try to create one. This book made me miss the days when people thought more positively and hopefully about many things, regardless of how bad it was at the time. Imagine the images in the mind of the average contemporary young person of the "World of 2050."

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.

Amid the other glowing reviews, let me offer a different perspective.

First, I was a bit disappointed in the size of the graphics. The book is only about 6 3/4" by 8 3/4", and the graphics and photos in many cases are difficult to see. In the cases of copies of book extracts and magazine images, they are often nearly impossible to resolve.

More troubling to me is the overall "lean" of the book. Expecting a fun book reflecting on images of the future, I was disappointed to read things like "The visual cacophony of the advertising-laden landscape was for him [Edward Bellamy of Boston in the 1880s]...the most palpable of symbols for the general depravity of the capitalist system."

And how about this quote from the section on space toys of the 1940s and '50s: "Girls who yearned to project themselves into a fantasy future through their toys had few media role models beyond the stereotype of the hero's girlfriend. The dual message to the younger generation seems clear enough--the future will be violent [too many space guns], and it will belong to men."

And here is how the book reviews the "Star Trek" series: "Though the crew, with black Uhura and the Asian Mr. Sulu, seemed to reflect newly enlightened attitudes, the program, like its 1930 relatives, was dominated by brave white males."

In discussing the future of housing, the book diverges from any discussion of future technology, and instead offers: "We ask whether the home of tomorrow will be inhabited predominantly by single-parent families, by working mothers and children. Will it contain greater numbers of couples without children at all, couples of the same sex, or other groups of adults living together, and if so with what social consequences?"

And as a final example of the social messages of the book, how about these phrases from the section "The Weapons and Warfare of Tomorrow":

"Although Americans have long cherished the myth that they are an unusually peace-loving people..."

"...just one more instance of the American habit of believing in that ultimate weapon, a technological fix, as a substitute for politics in eliminating world conflicts."

And finally: "...it ironically symbolized the country's broader policy on Viet Nam, an effort to refashion a foreign environment better fit to American needs and expectations."

To my taste, the book has too many unnecessary social messages. I was expecting a book on past visions of the future. Instead, I got a book on technology laced with criticisms of capitalism, Amercianism, and political policies. Those weaknesses cheapen what could have been a far more enjoyable publication.

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.

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.

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.

Plans are always niftier than their implementation. Plans can assume that everyone's OK with them & that weather & other unforeseen factors won't change anything. This is a great coffee table book about a lot of what might've been in the last hundred years or so.

This is a smallish book with some illustrations but not enough for my purposes. That said, the book is
really quite interesting and it pulls you in. There are also some neat reprints of old magazine ads and
related material. Overall (I was looking for a kitsch picture book) it left me a few color plates short.

I have had a long-term interest in the past's view of the future, and very much looked forward to receiving and reading this book. I was not disappointed, by either the informative text or the excellent illustrations. Mr. Corn is to be congratulated on producing a high-quality,engaging and readable book on a subject fascinating to many of us, either for fun or serious study.