American Dreams and Edwardian Aspirations: Technological Innovation and Temporal Uncertainty in Narratives of Expectation

Abstract

Futurist fiction is often represented — and offered — as an articulation of logical expectations, a form of systematic and mimetically minded fantasy. However, when viewed in hindsight, many such fictions appear more noteworthy for their unwitting penetration of the black shrouds of contemporary secrecy than for any ability to venture beyond that gossamer veil that separated their authors’ present reality from future possibilities. Indeed, narratives that anticipate innovations that have already been achieved but remain undisclosed illustrate just how problematic the once discrete concepts of past, present and future have become. Obversely, we may also discover that certain ideas and innovations which have been traditionally represented as first emerging from engineers’ drafting boards or scientists’ notebooks actually trace their inception to the humbler pages of popular magazines that included stories of imagination and anticipation.