Encyclopedia of the Future - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0028972058 ISBN 13: 9780028972053

Publisher: Macmillan Library Reference

About this title

From Booklist:

Some reference books become outdated in a year. However, if its editors and authors have gazed into their crystal balls with acuity, the Encyclopedia of the Future won't go out of date for another 25 years. This is the period the authors of its 450 articles were asked to project when writing about the future of such matters as agricultural technology, cities, family planning, museums, pharmaceuticals, railways, sexual harassment, voting, and the women's movement. In addition to social phenomena, public policy issues, and individual countries, the encyclopedia covers topics that at first glance would seem to have fixed and certain futures: Buddhism, minerals, and, of course, death and taxes. It also includes articles on noted futurologists (e.g., Buckminster Fuller, Herman Kahn, Nostradamus) and on methods used to forecast the future.

The editors have assembled an impressive group of contributors, including John Naisbitt (Global Paradox), William F. Buckley, Jr. (Conservatism, Political), Joseph A. Califano (Health Care Costs), F. Wilfrid Lancaster (Libraries: Elelctronic Formats), and Ben Bova (Space Flight). Approaches vary. Some authors couch their sketches of the future in if-then qualifiers; others confidently lay out statements about what the future will be like. For example, the article United States says that "Soccer will eventually replace football as the national pastime" and "Liberal Judaism will wither, as American Jews become either wholly secular or join Orthodox renewal movements." Every article concludes with a bibliography. However, since most cited items deal with the present, they offer readers leads on sources that provide context for the topics but that will be of less help in judging the probable validity of an article's conclusions. Readers in coming years would do well to consult the Future Survey Annual (World Future Society, 1979--) for more up-to-date materials to supplement the articles.

Appendixes list the most influential futurologists, the most influential books about the future, and a fascinating chronology. This last records historical predictions for times past as well as yet to come and projects the future billions and billions of years ahead--including scientific and technological breakthroughs in the year 200,000 that allow Earth's inhabitants to extend the life of the Sun to 20 trillion years. The index differentiates main treatment of a topic from secondary discussion and, through its subdivision of topics, shows the interrelatedness of topics.

Accuracy is a bedrock criterion for judging reference books. However, in the case of this one-of-a-kind encyclopedia, readers will be able to judge better its accuracy as time passes. Twenty-five years hence some of it will look prescient, other parts of it perhaps comic, and certain portions still fantastic. But until then, it will stimulate thinking and provide a useful starting point for anyone contemplating the future of any of the topics it engages.

From Library Journal:

An encyclopedia about the future should be a natural as a reference tool, since the interest and hype concerning the new century are building to a climax. How then did a set as poorly edited (by the president of the International Encyclopedia Society and the president of Public Policy Forecasting, Inc., respectively) as this title appear? One would expect a reference work on the future to be written by sociological, statistical, and scientific experts who would lend credibility to conjecture. Instead, here is Dan Quayle writing the entry on "Family Values" and producing a stilted snapshot of 1980s political rhetoric. The most incredible article is "Sexual Laws": not only does the author (editor Molitor) virtually ignore his topic but he presents a "litany of licensciousness" that is nothing less than a personal diatribe inexcusable in any tool that purports to be a reference work of reasonable balance and accuracy. At the end of the work is a chronology of the future patterned after H.G. Wells's The Shape of Things To Come that quickly dissolves into comic-book conjecture, such as millions of people dying of plagues in 1997. Many entries are excellent, but since the qualifications of the authors are not given, the reader is left wondering why. Articles based on authoritative government statistical projections and thoughtful research are fascinating, even inspiring, yet they serve to heighten one's disappointment given what this set might have been. Much here is excellent; much here is bad. For any library that doesn't mind handing out a genuinely unique reference tool of such uneven merit.?James Moffet, Baldwin P.L., Birmingham, Mich.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Macmillan Library Reference
• ISBN 10: 0028972058
• ISBN 13: 9780028972053
• Binding: Hardcover
• Editor: Kurian George Thomas, Molitor Graham T. T.