"Heinlein, Robert A - The Worlds Of Robert A Heinlein" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

Our present editor decided to use this article, but suggested that it
should be updated. Authors who wish to stay in the business listen most
carefully to editors' suggestions, even when they think an editor has been
out in the sun without a hat; I agreed.

And reread "Where To" and discovered that our editor was undeniably
correct; it needed updating. At least.

But at last I decided not to try to conceal my bloopers. Below is
reproduced, unchanged, my predictions of fifteen years back. But here and
there through the article I have inserted signs for footnotes Ч like this:
(z) Ч and these will be found at the end of the 1950 article . . . calling
attention to bloopers and then forthrightly excusing myself by
rationalizing how anyone, even Nostradamus, would have made the same
mistake . . . hedging my bets, in other cases, or chucking in brand-new
predictions and carefully laying them farther in the future than I am
likely to live . . . and, in some cases, crowing loudly about successful
predictions.

So Ч







WHERE TO?

(And Why We Didn't Get There)



Most science fiction consists of big-muscled stories about adventures in
space, atomic wars, invasions by extra-terrestrials, and such. All very
well Ч but now we will take time out for a look at ordinary home life half
a century hence.

Except for tea leaves and other magical means, the only way to guess at the
future is by examining the present in the light of the past. Let's go back
half a century and visit your grandmother before we attempt to visit your
grandchildren.



1900: Mr. McKinley is President and the airplane has not yet been invented.
Let's knock on the door of that house with the gingerbread, the stained
glass, and the cupola.