Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sunybcs!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!klaatu.rutgers.edu!josh From: josh@klaatu.rutgers.edu (J Storrs Hall) Newsgroups: comp.society.futures Subject: Re: Tony Akins's Futures Bibliography -- Part 1 Message-ID: Date: 6 Mar 90 02:39:03 GMT References: Distribution: comp Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 24 I think this bibliography is of very limited scope, and doesn't begin to touch the true futures literature. Many of the books mentioned, particularly "Looking Backward", "Challange of Man's Future", and "Limits to Growth", are politically motivated apologia for totalitarian dictatorship. Looking Backward was quite influential--one might say that the Communist Soviet state was based on its model. Looking backward on Looking Backward, I think we can say that its promises were empty and its model of working social structures hopelessly naive. Yet Looking Backward is the only true classic of futurology on the list. How could one place Stapledon on such a list and ignore H.G.Wells' "Time Machine", "When the Sleeper Wakes", and "The Shape of Things to Come"? Or Heinlein's future history? I reccomend Panshin's "World Beyond the Hill" as a good overview of science fiction that relegates Stapledon to his appropriate status. No such list can be considered started, much less complete, without Clarke's "Profiles of the Future". I would also throw in Drexler's "Engines of Creation" and Moravec's "Mind Children", for some more recent insights. --JoSH