Life In the Future — Part Two
By Alex Shvartsman
Wilson is a common surname, but the essay hit on a number of details with eerie accuracy. Just like the real Peter Wilson, the essay's protagonist was an engineering major at NYU, his roommate was an immigrant from Belarus, and he pirated electronic versions of senior year textbooks in order to support his daily eating habit. Peter wasn’t proud of that, but one could buy a lot of instant noodles for the price of a textbook.
Peter grew more bewildered with every coincidence, every spot-on detail the author had used in this five-decades-old article. He stared at the page, trying and failing to come up with a reasonable explanation. Then he powered his laptop and connected to the skittish hotel WiFi.
A quick search revealed that Colossal Fiction was an Ohio magazine which released only a handful of issues before folding in 1976. Peter was able to download scans of the entire run. Then he read every Life in the Future column in chronological order.
Lippert’s columns avoided the flashy and inaccurate predictions of the day such as flying cars, overpopulation, or interstellar travel. Instead, he focused on technological advances with uncanny foresight. From electric cars, to global warming, to e-commerce, Lippert dispensed billion-dollar ideas in every paragraph. What’s more, he seemed to utilize the creative non-fiction approach that showed this future society through the eyes of his young protagonist.
An essay on future families predicted the falling birth rates and used accurate tidbits of Peter’s childhood in Boston. The essay on electric cars described his hybrid Prius, down to its color and year of manufacture. Peter sat on the creaky hotel bed and read page after scanned page, overwhelmed by it all.
Alex Shvartsman is a writer, translator, and anthologist from Brooklyn, NY. He’s the author of Kakistocracy (2023), The Middling Affliction (2022), and Eridani’s Crown (2019) fantasy novels. Over 120 of his short stories have appeared in Analog, Nature, Strange Horizons, and many other venues. His website is www.alexshvartsman.com.
Copyright © 2025 Alex Shvartsman