Topic 6: Tomorrowland: 10 Stories About the Future, ed. Michael Cart

Cart, Michael, ed. 1999. Tomorrowland: Ten Stories about the Future. New York: Scholastic Press. ISBN: 0590376780.

What does the future hold? Mankind has always wondered about this and men have tried everything possible to figure it out. With the Y2K close at hand, Michael Cart invited nine other authors to write a short story to express their theory, hope or vision of the future. The variety that he received spanned millennia, from Jon Scieszka’s story set in 33,001 B.C. to Gloria Skurzynski’s story set on Mars. The authors provide bleak visions where dogs and books are almost extinct, to hopeful visions where baseball will always be played. The stories all tackle one issue or another, issues often created by society. “Such different stories. Such different futures. Yet all of them contain the same implicit invitation to think about how the seeds of possibility we planted in the past and continue to sow in the present might blossom into the future.” (Cart, ix.)

Lois Lowry’s “Rage” is a story about who young man saw his grandfather become bitter after selling part of his land to government for a wildlife preserve. The government “had planned for Pop’s acreage to the west was for a kind of nature that had begun to evolve in our state and every other.” (Lowry, 97.) The betrayal leads to serious consequences for all involved. “Rage” is contrasted with the specter of hope that one monk shares with a novice monk at the turn of the first millennium. In “Night of the Plague” by James Cross Giblin, the bubonic plague ravages Europe, where one young monk wonders if the world is ending. As he faces a disease that is killing old and young alike, he realizes his own mortality and like one of the victims he is treating fears the disease means it is the end of the world. Asking an older monk what he thinks life will be like a thousand years from then, he ponders the older monk’s response. “’I have no idea,’ said Brother Paul. ‘But you can be certain of one thing; it will be very different.’”(Giblin, 167.) Taking hope from this the young monk goes back to his duties tending the ill in the infirmary, ready to give hope to the sick.

Science fiction is a genre that is stretched by the short stories included in this anthology. The stories are connected through a common theme, "visions of times to come."(Publisher’s Weekly.) One critic has mentioned the distinctive cover art for the story, “The attractive (well, to teens) cover art of a spaceship shoulder tattoo will reel readers in, and the stories will net them, hook, line, and sinker.” (Farber.) A detail that the reviewer didn’t mention was that the person, pictured looking out into space seems to be wearing a suit of armor that seems to be riveted, which ties the medieval story into the rockets in outer space stories. The stories run the gamut of human emotion, cautions the reader about societal dangers often taken for granted, and offers snatches of hope for the future.

Reference List:

Cart, Michael, ed. 1999. Tomorrowland: Ten Stories About the Future. New York: Scholastic Press.

Farber, Susan. 1999. Review of Tomorrowland: 10 Stories About the Future, ed. Michael Cart. School Library Journal. Available at: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=ba6kWDUAgn&isbn=0590376780&itm=1. Last Accessed 7 December 2004.

Giblin, James Cross. 1999. Night of the Plague. In Tomorrowland: 10 Stories About the Future, ed. Michael Cart. New York: Scholastic Press. 167.

Lowry, Lois. 1999. Rage. In Tomorrowland: 10 Stories About the Future, ed. Michael Cart. New York: Scholastic Press. 97.

___________. 1999. Review of Tomorrowland: 10 Stories About the Future, ed. Michael Cart. Publisher’s Weekly. (Oct.). Available at: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=ba6kWDUAgn&isbn=0590376780&itm=1. Last Accessed 7 December 2004.