Because I come from one of the many generations that was promised a flying car in the 21st century (along with many other wicked cool space age advancements) I was all over Brian Fies' Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?. Starting at the 1939 World's Fair in NYC (which was all literally about the World of Tomorrow)(and which my grandparents actually attended), Fies follows the story of a father and son who never age - they are merely a timeless presence in each ensuing decade. You have both the accomplishments and fears of the years that follow - the end of WWII, building a fallout shelter in the 1950s, the launch of Gemini 4 in the 1960s, Apollo-Soyuz in 1975 and then a look at the far future when we really do get what we hoped for. The father and son have different dreams for the future - although both look towards technological advancement with excitement the father is more grounded in security while the son thinks more globally - more of the sheer joy the future could bring.

All politics aside however, it is the way Fies depicts the past and how we saw the future from those eras that really really really makes this book sing. As someone who grew up on the Space Coast and remembers all those launches so vividly, it rang especially true to me. I really wanted my flying car and I thought we would get it one day....and I still wish that Jetsons dream of tomorrow would come true.

I partly blame Walt Disney for all this, you know. Tomorrowland set me up for a big round of disappointments when those "people movers" never got built. (Disney is mentioned quite a bit in the book as well.)

If you are of a certain age, Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? is going to be hugely appealing. Personally, I took one look at the "SpacePort Motel" where the father and son say while in Cape Canaveral for the launch and I got such a huge flashback for home as it was when I was a kid that it set me reeling. Everything was "space" something back in the 70s and we loved it. There's nothing like living in a place where you walk outside to watch a rocket launch to really make you think that a Mars landing might happen one day. I'm like Ray Bradbury - we need to get back up there just so we can be going somewhere. What are we going to do otherwise? Sit around and fight over who has the biggest pile of rocks and oil? Really? I love the advancements we have made and I think there is still a lot to learn about the oceans but I also think we lost something when we stopped trying to get into deep space. It shouldn't be about winning - about beating the Russians or anyone else - it should just be about trying to see what is out there.

Magellan just wanted to circle the globe, after all. Scott just wanted to reach the South Pole. Did finding the head of the Nile really matter other than to know where it began? Did Edmund Hillary and Tenzig Norgay capture Everest for someone? Sometimes you just have to try and go; sometimes you just have to go see what is out there.

I think, as Fies shows, that a lot of amazing things have happened in recent years but I want my flying car, still. And honestly, I want my Starship Enterprise too.

[Final shot an interior from Brian Fies' Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?. See Forbidden Planet's excellent thorough review. This book was NOT a review copy, in case you're wondering!]