En Español

What will the future bring? To answer that question, you need to know what is possible. You also need imagination.

Science fiction stories can help give you ideas. Science fiction mixes real science with make-believe. Writers and engineers imagined what life would be like in 2009. Does your life look like what they predicted?

In the 1950s, a science fiction book described an amazing house. It was a house of the future. Robots did all the chores. They cooked and cleaned. They set the table and vacuumed.

Today, robots really are on the job. They vacuum floors, cook meals, and build cars. Robots are even exploring outer space.

Disneyland had a "smart" house, too. The house almost ran itself. Today, many homes are run by automatic controls. Microwaves can cook meals in just minutes.

Some ideas from the past were out of this world. How does a city in space sound? Some people thought we would live on the moon by the 1990s!

How would this work? Well, people would use hydroponics to grow their food. That means the plants would grow without soil. Energy from the sun would supply power.

Today, astronauts do live in a space station. They stay only a few months at a time, though. Some farms grow plants without soil. Many homes on Earth use power from the sun. But a city in space is still many years away.

People had telephones and television in the fifties. A clever writer put the two together!

Dick Tracy was a comic book character. He used his watch as a phone. The watch also let him see people while he talked to them. In real life, no one had a watch like Tracy's.

Today, many people watch videos on their cell phones. People use webcams to see each other on the Internet. What was only in stories 50 years ago is really possible today!

Some people don't just imagine the future. They try to build it. Take the jetpack. This is a backpack with a small rocket engine. You put the pack on. You rev it up. Then you take off!

The jetpack isn't as great as it seems. It can't carry very much fuel. So it can't go very far. Also, the fuel is dangerous. It gets very, very hot! And the pack's loud engine can hurt your ears.

Still, a jetpack is a fun idea. Maybe one day someone will make the pack work. Until that time, you better count on the bus.

Another cool idea was the flying car. It had wings. The car really worked! Flying cars didn't completely catch on. Maybe they were hard to park.

In one science fiction story, people jumped on moving belts to get around. That wasn't such a crazy idea. Today "people movers" carry travelers through airports. Escalators carry people up and down. There are even moving sidewalks in some places.

People in the 1950s dreamed of a car that drove itself. Today, the car is still a dream. But in time, that dream may come true, too.

In 1950, the only computers were very big. Each one filled a whole room! No one had a personal computer. Then someone invented the computer chip. The tiny chip let engineers build small computers. Now, millions of people have their own computer at home.

The future of the fifties is here. Think about your future. Will you get to work with a jetpack? Will you live in an underwater city? Think big. Think fantastic! The future is yours to invent.

Article by Terri L. Jones. Top-of-page illustration by Davis Meltzer. "Back to the Future" appears on page 18 of the April 2009 issue.