Fred's Book Club: Book of Future Past.

Happy new year! And welcome to the first edition of the Humpback Writers, still called that because it falls on a Wednesday, and despite the new year and new decade (depending on how you count) it still has the same dumb name.

This week we have an interesting book, almost thirty years old, that addressed concerns many people had about the futuristic year of 2000:

Gail Collins -- who later became the first female editor of the New York Times' editorial page -- and her husband Dan, a news writer and CBS news producer, published The Millennium Book in 1991 as "Your Essential All-Purpose Guide for the Year 2000." It is important to note that at the time Ms. Collins had been writing for the New York Daily News, and had demonstrated to me during that tenure her sense of humor. Which is why I came into possession of this book, lo those many years ago, when I was a chipper young chap. Well, the Times sucked the humor out of her, but not before she wrote this book.

The Millennium Book is a neat handheld compendium of information on the previous thousand years, 1000 to 1991, and a look forward at the next thousand. Best of all, it's a look at the year 2000 by people in the past. In the introduction, the authors quote John Naisbitt and Patricia Aburdine in their book on the topic, Megatrends 2000: "For centuries, that monumental, symbolic date has stood for the future and what we shall make of it. In a few years that future will be here.... operating like a powerful magnet on humanity... amplifying emotions, accelerating change, heightening awareness and compelling us to reexamine ourselves, our values and our institutions."

"Whew," the Collinses reply, "It's going to be hard to live up to that kind of billing."

I think it's safe to say that considering how the Internet has amplified emotions, and how our values and institutions are getting the bejeezus kicked out of them by know-nothings and Twitter mobs, that the Megatrends 2000 authors may have been at least partly correct, and it's a completely miserable thing, not the dawning of the goddamn Age of Aquarius.

As you can see by the cover, the book features amazing names of people from the previous millennium (such as Eric Bloody Axe, Sancho the Fat, and the now-famous Harald Bluetooth) and discussions of how your life would have been in past eras (nasty, brutish, short seems to be the consensus). There are plenty of cracks against Christianity, Western culture, and humanity in general along the way, because the authors, as members of the press, can't help spreading the hate. But compared to what goes on today, especially in our institutions of "higher education," it's pretty mild.

In addition to lots of lists by then-big-now-deceased people like Liz Smith ("Ten Best Parties") and Roger Ebert ("Top Ten Films") and Jack Newfield ("Most Corrupt Public Officials"), the book features plenty of interesting and "useful millennial prophecies." Nostradamus is included, of course, and boy, he was certain that something bad was definitely going to happen in July 1999! And... no, not so much.

The Collinses summarize famous prognosticatory utopian novels as well, like Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward and William Morris's News from Nowhere. Characters in these hopeful tomes usually work hard only because they want to, or maybe not at all, spending time instead on the development of the mind and spirit; usually everything is owned by a beneficent government that barely has to do anything, as everything runs so well. Funny that the closer we got to the year 2000, the more prophecies turned dark; the Collinses also look at books that had the world collapsed by world war, plague, pollution, and/or environmental devastation, or ground beneath the heel of brutal dictatorship. All I can say is, it's a wonder I and all my science-fiction-reading friends didn't die from drugs before 2000.

The book also includes some of its own prophecies, and it's interesting to see how some of them turned out, at least so far. We're told that deforestation was killing us, and the Chinese were trying to stop the spread of the Gobi by planting a "great green wall" of trees, because the Chinese government is synonymous with environmental concern. (Apparently they've been continuing this effort for more than thirty years, but one suspects it is just for show while they pollute the crap out of everything elsewhere.) Or maybe overpopulation will do us in by 2020; "The population of Kenya is expected to jump from 23 million to 79 million in the next thirty years." (It is actually at 48.4 million at last estimate, so those Kenyans better get busy if they want to meet quota.) The ozone layer's thinning was "doing fundamental damage to nature" including breaking the food chain by destroying plankton; plus, "the entire ozone layer had diminished 2 percent from 1969 to 1986 -- way faster than anyone had anticipated." (In 2018, The Guardian reported "The ozone layer is showing signs of continuing recovery from man-made damage and is likely to heal fully by 2060, new evidence shows.")

But don't worry, climate change is sure to slaughter us by the carload soon enough.

The last chapter in the book has predictions from the children who would be the Class of 2000 -- that is, they were no more than eight when the book was written -- about what the year 2000 would hold. These include gems like:

• There will be Wiffle Ball in the World Series.
• There will be purple, green, blue, red and orange-colored wheels. But there will only be green cars.
• Everybody will give food to the poor. Nobody will litter.
• I will get a job that pays twenty dollars a day, five days a week. I will try to get rich and live in a mansion. With a huge pool. I will have a maid and butler. I will have a whirlpool. And a hot tub. I will swim in my money.
• The food will be good. The teachers will be robots.
• When I'm grown up, bread might be ten dollars.
• Children will be born in space.
• There will be yellow cornfields and blue driveways and purple streets and a black moon. But I don't know why.
• All the people will be taking drugs.

I think those last two predictions might be related.

All those children are middle-aged now. I wonder if that one kid ever got his maid and butler.

One thing the authors of the book and the people they spoke with did not see coming was this little doohickey called the Internet. A fellow named Robert Olson with the Institute for Alternative Futures (still around) predicted that people would be voting via home computer, which indicates the anticipation of a widespread home-accessed computer network. But server farms, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth (not Harald), Google, Amazon, the Hampster Dance, streaming services, amazing blogs, smartphones, were all completely unforeseen, at least by anyone willing to share the vision. It shows you that no matter what you expect, how well you plan, some smart-ass is going to upset the apple cart. Some people think that the future really began just four years later in 1995, and for most of us it seemed to take the world by storm.

One fun final note: The book tells us that Edward Woodyard, a writer, decided to book a room in the Times Square Marriott (which was not built yet) for New Year's Eve 1999 in 1983. Well, I'm happy to say that not only did Mr. Woodyard stay in a large suite in the hotel on 12/31/99 with his wife and two children, but the hotel gave them the accommodations free of charge. (As far as I can tell, Mr. Woodyard is still around, too, and three cheers for his foresight.)

I know that our little book club here often looks at books that are out of print, and considering how dated this one is, it is fair to say it is extremely out of print. But with a new decade upon us, I couldn't resist featuring this one.

Next week I'll actually feature a book that you won't have to get from Abe Books! Probably!