The technology of the 20th century is the product of dreams and war. Jules Verne was one of the earliest dreamers with FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON and 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA forseeing space travel and submarines. Werner von Braun was reading American science fiction during World War II while he developed the V-2 missle to kill American allies in London. He had a subscription to the American magazine, Amazing Stories, which was sent to neutral Sweden and forwarded to him at Peenemunde. What is regarded as the first general purpose electronic computer, the ENIAC, was developed to calculate ballistic tables for artillary during WWII. A small, light, rugged grandchild of ENIAC was necessary to do the calculations for the moon landing. Cold War competition motivated the development of the technology that gives us home computers and the internet today.

Science education was nonexistent at my Catholic grammar school in the 60's, and things don't seem to be much better today. I have talked to some grammar school kids and they are being taught to use business software which will almost certainly be obsolete by the time they graduate from high school. They could not tell me how an atom was constructed or what an electron was. Atoms and electricity will work the same way 1000 years from today as they do now. We will probably know more about them by then but the fundamentals won't change. A couple of educators have told me the schools are emphasizing liberal arts, not science. How does that prepare children for the techno-future?

Compare Shakespeare's JULIUS CAESAR to ROMEO AND JULIET. These stories take place about 1500 years apart. Julius was stabbed to death and armies fought with swords in his day. There are two sword fights in ROMEO AND JULIET. Horses were the primary form of transportation both 500 and 2000 years ago. When was the last time you heard about a sword fight on the nightly news? When did you last ride horse? Have you ever ridden a horse?

There were 8,000 automobiles and 14,000,000 horses in the United States in 1900. There are now more than 222,000,000 automobiles. When did you last see a horse? There were 8,000 electronic computers in the world some time in the 50's. It is now estimated that 400,000,000 people access the internet daily. The world is changing faster and children are wasting their minds playing a lot of electronic games that teach nothing. Some may be good for teaching strategy but we should be able to do more than that with computers this powerful.

Science fiction is about possible futures, parts of some of those possible futures are going to become real. The children are going to grow up and have to deal with some future. If the schools aren't getting them ready what chances do they have of coping those unknown futures? Since all sci-fi is not created equal, the purpose of this site is to point out some of the good stuff. This site includes non-fiction and some real science and technology.