April 29, 2014

Tuesday April 29, 2014  From a work in progress:

"The past is a foreign country.  They do things differently there."  L. P. Hartley, _The Go-Between_.

The future is also a foreign country; and the guidebooks are so wrong, you can't even rely on the opposite of what they say.  

Look at old nonfiction predictions -- political, technological, social, and artistic.  

Read old science fiction.  Human cities on Mars by 1970.  The Soviet Union flourishing for centuries to come.  Beatniks in space, exactly like 1960s bohemians.

Being wrong about the future might not hurt a writer's sales.  Nonfiction books predicting Barry Goldwater and George McGovern winning the US Presidency sold reasonably well.  Fiction writers who have 1970s rock dominating popular music centuries from now are published regularly.  

But if you're like me, being wrong can hurt your pride.   If so, here are some ways of being less wrong about the future....

***My local coffeehouse is open again:   Black Waffles and Coffee, formerly Muddsuckers. 

They do serve non-black coffee.  And as far as I know, their waffles aren't black.

***Weather forecasts still say "Rain, possibly mixed with snow."

***Online, looked up the Star Tribune's story on the DFL City Convention.   It included The Important Information, and omitted the unimportant things which mattered more to me.

***From Twitter:

Retweeted by Simon Bisson
silvie9000 ‏@silvie9000 are you a writer specializing in horror but out of fresh ideas for offing people? just cruise IKEA's product recalls http://www.ikea.com/us/en/about_ikea/newsroom/product_recalls …