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Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Clinically depressed fans of Star Trek and The Jetsons, take heart: the future you've been dreaming of-ray guns, robot maids, unisex jumpsuits, space vacations-is ready for production. Sort of. That's the premise of this tongue-in-cheek look at all the techno-wonders that 21st century man was promised by sci-fi dreamers of the past. In his introduction, author and robotics expert Wilson (How to Survive a Robot Uprising) sets forth a pledge: "If the technology is possible-even remotely so-this book will lay it out," gamely ignoring "any potentially catastrophic consequences." Happily, this Ph.D. isn't trading in idle speculation; among plenty of jokes and silliness he deals in solid-and fascinating-science. For instance, it turns out that teleportation can work, and in fact already has: exploiting an obscure (and complicated) rule of quantum physics, scientists achieved, under lab conditions, the teleportation of a single photon in 1993. Wilson goes on to explain (or debunk) much-anticipated wonders like robot pets, food pills and cryogenic freezing ("the chance of being reborn in the future as a brain-dead humanoid zombie surely beats having no chance at all"). Though readers of this slim guide may not be inspired to "raise your voice, and demand your personal jetpack," it's got plenty of encouragement and info for frustrated futurists.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Book Description
It's the 21st century and--let's be honest--things aren't exactly as advertised. Despite predictions of a fully automated, atomic-powered, germ-free Utopia where robot servants cater to our whims, we are not living the future we were promised.
In Where's My Jetpack?, roboticist Daniel H. Wilson takes a hilariously deadpan look at the future we imagined for ourselves. He exposes technologies, spotlights existing prototypes and reveals plans that crashed and burned on the drawing-board. Wilson leads readers beyond the Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue to find cool gadgets in arcane places. And if the technology isn't public, he'll explain how to build, buy or steal it. The 30 entries, spanning topics such as teleportation, space vacations and x-ray specs, push the nostalgia button.
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Where's My Jetpack?,
This review is from: Where's My Jetpack? (Paperback)
Where are all those wonderful things we were promised in the future... 40 years ago?The author is a scientist who gives a clear explanation of the current status of a number of items such as jet packs, cloaking devices and living on the moon. There are a few surprises as many now exist but they are very expensive and not available to the public.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Build your own hoverboard!,
By John Burns "Author of Runnerland, a novel for... (Vancouver, BC Canada) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Where's My Jetpack? (Paperback)
Robots, cyborgs, and strange planets with their own languages - it sometimes appears that anything and everything is possible in books. Real life, by comparison, seems so drab. Where, demands Daniel Wilson, is the stuff of wonder, all that cool gear we were guaranteed? Where's My Jetpack? A Guide to the Amazing Science Fiction Future That Never Arrived is a nonfiction book for kids and adults that itemizes the sleek chrome Tomorrowland we were meant to inherit. How close have we come to attaining our Jetsons-style destiny? Sadly, not very, concludes the author, who writes about even complex science with an enviable competence and humour. Find out how to build your own hoverboard, learn how close we are to (finally) developing reliable rebreathers, and get the inside scoop on how to book your own berth on a revamped zeppelin. It's none of it as cool as we were promised, but hey, at least we haven't let the robots take over yet.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.8 out of 5 stars (22 customer reviews) 20 of 21 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Entertaining and informative, but needs photos.,
By Arthur M. Bullock - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Where's My Jetpack? (Paperback)
This book is classified as humor, and indeed it is very amusing. The ironic tone is maintained well, and the occasional jokes have a pretty good batting average at really being funny. However, the book is also quite factual in its discussions of the current state of progress on the various "Wonders of Tomorrow". Since so much of this involves actual robots, rocket planes, jetpacks, etc., that exist today (or at least existed at one time), you really want to see photos of these things. There are none at all in the book.By the way, I'm still waiting for the solar-powered electro-suspension car that I saw on the old "Disneyland" TV show. 29 of 37 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
A survey of ironic future-tech,
By M. A. Plus "Advanced Atheist" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Where's My Jetpack? (Paperback)
You have to hand it to yesterday's science fiction writers and futurologists: They portrayed futures where people got off their butts and did interesting things in the physical world: flying around in jetpacks, building underwater cities with the help of artificial gills and trained dolphins, colonizing the moon, etc. These visionary projects seem a far cry from the allegedly "futuristic" stuff popular in the real early 21st Century, like sitting in front of your computer all day and pretending you have a "second life" online. Wilson explores the current state of the more interesting technologies from futures past, demonstrates some of their weaknesses and impracticalities, and points to individuals, companies and organizations still working on things sort of like what people my age (late 40's) and older remember hearing in our youth about the wonders of the 21st Century.Wilson's book could have benefitted from some better fact checking, however. Specifially in his chapter on "Cryogenic Freezing," he erroneously states that "dozens of companies" offer cryonics services. In fact, only two organizations that I know of -- Alcor Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona, and the Cryonics Institute in Clinton Township, Michigan -- perform cryonic suspensions and storage of patients. And they don't run as "companies," which implies profit-seeking; instead they run as not-for-profit organizations that stay in existence in defiance of market signals, not unlike progressive talk radio in the U.S. Wilson also erroneously implies that the cryogenic dewars which store cryonics patients need electricity to maintain their liquid nitrogen temperature, when in fact they work passively, without electricity, like thermos bottles. And he ignores or doesn't know about progress in the vitrification of the human brain, which bypasses the formation of damaging ice crystals. These and some other mistakes aside, Wilson has performed a service by adding to the growing body of literature that asks, "Why does the real world in the 21st Century look so lame?" He also encourages the reader who wants these kinds of things to become a lot more assertive about acquiring them. "Get out there, raise your voice, and demand your personal jetpack -- the magnificent future of humankind depends on it." 5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Science humor,
By R. Howell "boriskhan" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Where's My Jetpack? (Paperback)
Carnagie Mellon University PhD, degree in robotics, author of "How to Survive the Robot Uprising" = Daniel Wilson. Wilson takes another foray into the world of books by giving us the ever important question of 'Where's My Jetpack?'. Science fiction of the past predicted so many ideas for our future on surefire technologies that would come to pass... but didn't. Wilson looks into a plethora of these ideas and just how far they have progressed to feasibility and marketability. The answer is a big fat zero. Wilson keeps it simple for the mass audience, meaning we don't require PhDs ourselves to get the jist of what the author is conveying. Wilson gives us updates on projects and shows us the close-to-completion, won't-happens, and the looming-on-the-horizon of the old futurama ideas.There's plenty of light humor mixed into the writings and some are pretty bad jokes. It's a light and fanciful book to read and will only take a few hours to complete. He covers topics ranging from jetpacks, flying cars, hoverboards, robot servants, smart houses, underwater and lunar cities, civilian space travel, ray guns, holograms, cloaking devices, food & no-sleep pills, cryogenics, and more. The book itself has blue foiled page edges and cover; the illustrations are largely silhouettes and simple line drawings but satisfactory. Overall, it's quick to read and will make you think of all the missed opportunities of the past science fiction world proposed by the likes of Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, and Tomorrowland. |
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