Kondo, Yoji - Requiem _Henlein Memorial Collection by Requiem;Tributes to the Grand Master

Author:Requiem;Tributes to the Grand Master
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-10-20T16:15:20+00:00

THE FUTURE REVISITED

Madame Chairman, Banquet Chairman, members of the World Science Fiction Convention, friends – pro-tocol now requires that I make a speech.

I don’t know why this is so. I’m quite sure that nothing I can say tonight can compete with the entertainment offered last night.

There will be a question period. But right now, under a precedent established at the First World Science Fiction Convention, I am expected to produce some Big Thoughts giving clear evidence of a Deep Thinker.

It has been just twenty years since the last time I did this. A good interval, I think – it gives time for a new generation of fans to grow up and thereby reduces the likelihood that discrepancies between the Deep Thoughts on the first occasion and the Deep Thoughts on the next occasion will show up – it lets me speak freely.

Is there anyone here tonight who was at the Denver Convention in 1941? Do you recall what I said on that occasion?

You see? That shows you what one gets for deep thoughts. My subject twenty years ago was THE

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DISCOVERY OF THE FUTURE. My subject tonight is THE FUTURE REVISITED – and we’ll check up a little, not too closely, on whether what I said twenty years ago still makes sense.

If you all will be so gracious as to invite me again, twenty years from tonight, I’ll be happy to accept.

1981, that will be – I can’t accept for 1984; Big Brother will be watching.

We might hold the 1981 convention on the Moon, at Luna City. I understand that there are very few conventions on the Moon – and these affairs have been growing more and more unconventional over the years – so we should call it Looneycon.

My subject in 1981 will be – obviously – THE

FUTURE … WHATEVER BECAME OF IT?

But it may be more practical – more in accordance with the wishes of the authorities – for us to hold the 1981 Convention in some small garden city of the future located on the Arctic Ocean in the far north of Siberia.

We can call it the SlaveCon.

I went back and reread that speech of twenty years ago in order to see just what slips I would have to cover up or explain away tonight.

I found that it was not going to be necessary to cover up – largely because I had been too cagey to make very many specific predictions. However, I did make two hard-nosed predictions.

I predicted that the years immediately following 1941 would be a period of great and radical change 296

… change so great that most people would not be able to understand it, assimilate it, cope with it – and that the whole world would start behaving irrationally – crazy.

Does anyone want to dispute that it has? If so, I won’t argue – I’ll simply refer them to the headlines in tonight’s paper.

I also said that science fiction fans, because they were interested in the future and believed in change, would not be so

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