Your Flying Car Awaits: Robot Butlers, Lunar Vacations, and Other Dead-Wrong Predictions of the Twentieth Century

by Paul Milo

Overview

A delightful mixture of science fiction, utopian vision, and just plain crazy ideas, Your Flying Car Awaits is a hilarious and insightful compendium of the most outrageous and completely ridiculous predictions of the 20th Century. Award-winning journalist Paul Milo’s collection of “Robot Butlers, Lunar Vacations, and Other Dead-Wrong Predictions of the Twentieth Century” is true history on the lighter side, a must for fans of Ken Davis and his bestselling Don’t Know Much About® series as well as the popular Darwin Awards books. For an unforgettable journey back through the misguided scientific mindset of the previous century, climb aboard—Your Flying Car Awaits!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061724602
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	12/08/2009
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Paul Milo is an award-winning journalist and freelance writer. His freelance work has appeared on Beliefnet and in Editor and Publisher and Exit, an alternative weekly.

Editorial Reviews

Imagine what the world would be like today if only a fraction of the wacky predictions over the centuries had come true. We'd be dodging each other in flying cars…Didn't quite work out that way—and maybe for the better. You get that sense after ripping through Your Flying Car Awaits, Paul Milo's wonderful treasury of faulty forecasts. And you come to a better understanding of how hope and imagination more often than not triumph over reality.
—The Washington Post

Steven Levingston

There was a time when people thought future generations would be living in cities topped by geodesic domes, and that all babies would be born in mechanical incubators, probably after having their DNA selected for better intelligence or physical attractiveness. Milo explains why these and dozens of other predictions never came to fruition in a wide-ranging survey that covers everything from atomic energy (which some scientists predicted would never work out) to Puerto Rican statehood. Sometimes the wrong guesses even contradict themselves: airplanes would never work, conventional wisdom once ran; once they'd proven successful, people believed they'd be fast enough to cover the globe in mere hours. Milo's tone is amiably conversational, filled with casual asides such as the discovery that “the electric car was also the flavor of the month more than one hundred years ago.” He delves into the work of some famous visionaries, from Paul Ehrlich to Hal Lindsey but refrains from mocking even those who were completely off the mark. Readers will come away with a smattering of historical information in several scientific and cultural fields, but it's presented in such a way that they'll feel like experts. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly