Where's My Jetpack?: A Guide to the Amazing Science Fiction Future That Never Arrived [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.

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."

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.