Unfinished Worlds

In the mid-twentieth century, popular predictions offered bold visions of what life would be like in the future. In the 1930s and 1940s, scientists and engineers predicted an imminent synthetic age unlimited by the bounds of organic materials and natural resources. After World War II, public intellectuals warned of a much darker future brought about by technological hubris. In the decades that followed, an environmental consciousness inspired visions of a future based on sustainable production and consumption. In Unfinished Worlds, environmental historian Richard Judd uses “predictive literature”—books and popular articles about the future by physical and social scientists, science fiction writers, engineers, and architects—to explore how Americans thought about technology, culture, and nature in this critical half century. Future-thinking, Judd argues, both drove social change and laid the foundation for our contemporary environmental consciousness. As we now grapple with existential environmental threats, the futures of the past remind us that our own future is a sum of present-day choices, and that to be useful, future-thinking must be inclusive, embracing both scientists and citizens, and cultural and environmental as well as technological and scientific options.