What do Star Trek, certain 50’s era industrial films, and Flash Gordon have in common? They all present a pretty positive view of the future of humanity. It’s something we could use right about now; but try as we might, these fictitious beacons hope are almost nowhere to be found.

There was a time before 1984, before dystopianism was the primary motif behind our imaginary jaunts to the future. But by the time the original Star Trek series hit the airwaves, it was notable for its less then grim view at our possible future. Sure, there were petty conflicts between various alien races (who obviously had problems with the differing shapes of their foreheads) – but all in all, beyond the occasional dust-up with the Klingons, the positives outweighed the negatives, nearly a thousand to one. If Kirk and his minions got killed in some galactic backwater, the Earth at least would still have a handle on racism, poverty, disease, and traffic accidents.

Jules Verne didn’t write science fiction, not really. He wrote stories that just happened to have fantastic feats of engineering – if he really wanted to, he could have achieved the same effect writing about wizards and elves. It just so happens that he had a certain amount of scientific interest and, no doubt, found it easier to prod his imagination in that direction.

Unlike Orwell, Verne didn’t have a political message in his work. 1984 isn’t exactly sci-fi either: It projects a future, yes, but it’s innovations are in imagining an inescapable fascist box, and the only high technology involved are things which allow Big Brother a tighter grip on the masses.

So what happened to our faith in a glorious and prosperous future? We can’t blame Orwell or Huxley for our current lack of optimism. After all, barely ten years after 1984 American companies were producing industrial films, claiming to show us how wonderful the future would be; of course, this wonderfulness was going to be brought to us by all of the new products that these corporations were working on at the time.

One can’t have expected the industrial films of the 50’s and 60’s to touch on serious political issues; but in a way, they did. Whenever the voice-over man said something like, “Cooking in the future will be breeze with your new Radar Range!” you just knew he was talking about a future defined not only by fantastic kitchen appliances – he was also conjuring images of a world without Communism. In fact, if you get really into it, you can almost hear a genteel, stentorian voice saying, “If you pitch in and help beat the Ruskies, then we’ll build cities on the moon, and all of these magical consumer goods will be yours.

The 1950’s and 60’s were also a time of Rocky Jones: Space Ranger and Quisp commercials on television. Kids grew up imagining themselves piloting rockets to and fro, while eating space age cereal and TANG, while their moms dreamt of having a phone in every room and their fathers were driving around in cars with ridiculous fins and tail-lights. The Red Menace was lurking around the other side of the planet, it didn’t stop the writers and filmmakers of the day from daring to imagine a world where interplanetary conflicts could be solved with nothing more than a good right cross or, at worst, a ray-gun blast.

It all seems terribly naïve nowadays; and while trends come and go, being naïve is never fashionable. It’s hard to imagine, but once upon a time the notion of a 24 hour news cycle was unheard of. The world was clearly divided up in to friends and enemies, and in spite of their fearsome reputation, the Commies never blew up anyone we knew.

These days, it’s not the Russian Reds everyone’s afraid of; it’s terrorists with no fixed abode. In the days before Nixon, we mostly trusted our leaders to look out for our future; now we realize that they’re just like us – only in it for themselves and their friends. Worst of all, we realize that the future may indeed have lots of wonderful gadgets for us to play with – but no one has enough money to buy any of them.

The notion of America as a team, working towards a brighter tomorrow is gone. Not that there was any truth in this idea, but it was certainly marketed to a willing, mostly white middle class. It all changed when the Baby-Boomers hit adolescence. There came the horrible realizations that a popular president can be killed; that equality in America didn’t really apply to black people and women; that astronauts can die in horrible fires, like anyone else; that your president might be a crook; that there are wars we cannot win.

Even so, where’s our optimism gone? On the whole, the Cold War was just as menacing as the one we’re dealing with now. It’s can’t just be the threat of fiery death at any moment that’s made us lose our hope – we’ve been through that before. If we can dream of flying cars, then it’s not too unreasonable to dream of leaders who won’t be utterly lacking in morals and good sense. Women and minorities have made great strides towards being recognized as human beings, and while the struggle continues, things are better for them at present. We’ve won every military conflict that we’ve embroiled ourselves in since Vietnam. What went wrong?

Well, when you’re living paycheck to paycheck, tomorrow isn’t rich with promise – it’s rich with the menace that some new financial crisis will completely sideline you. Having a stay at home wife isn’t only politically incorrect; it’s a luxury that most Americans will never be able to afford. Only the affluent can afford to engage in back-straining labor for no pay. The America in the fifties seems like Camelot for many reasons, but the tremendous buying power of the American dollar is foremost.

Our loss of hope is simply a matter of the average person being poorer than he’s ever been over the past 70-odd years. Not only will you not be able to buy the wondrous contraptions of the future, you won’t be able to improve yourself to the degree required to make it out of debt. Ever.

Educational costs have spiraled since the fifties. The idea of retraining for a new career was unheard of back then – now it’s something that a lot of people find themselves doing instead of retiring. Instead of making the products of a halcyon future, you’ll be making coffee.

There are no signals at this point indicating that the distribution of wealth in this country is going to change anytime soon; like it or not, capitalism is here to stay.

Actually, there seems to have been a decrease in dystopian literature and film since the 80’s. Sure, there are bits of camp like Escape From L.A. or neo-biblical retreads like The Matrix, but overall we seem less interested in imagining dark futures for ourselves; we need only look at tomorrow for those.

-B. C. Silvia