The future through the eyes of the past

Sorry for missing my day - this past week was the final week of Hell Month at work, and by the time my "day" rolled around, I was feeling pretty burnt out. Anyway, for readers who might not have been following along this week, the challenge was to view this image, and to then concoct a story behind it. I'm embarrassed to say that despite my love of sci-fi and the fact that I once co-founded an alien/space-related cult, I could come up with nothing nearly as interesting as the things my bloggers-in-crime posted below. So instead I've decided to tell you what first popped into my head when I saw that cover.

In 2000, I was living in St. Petersburg, Russia. I had gone to Russia on a student visa, but in order to stay for the summer I needed to change to a business visa. In order to do this, one must leave the country. So, I took the train up to Finland, where I spent three days in Helsinki getting a new Russian visa. Helsinki is an expensive place - especially to someone who'd just spent five months in the inexpensive paradise that St. Petersburg was back in 2000. I was also shelling out a large chunk of cash to have my visa expedited. The point is, I was poor. Somehow (I must have an instinct for this or something) I found my way to a section of Helsinki full of thrift stores and used book stores. In one of the former, I found a lime green skirt. In one of the latter, I found a stack of sci-fi paperbacks from the twenties and thirties. In English. And really cheap. As I was always on the hunt for English-language reading material, I snapped them up.

I wish I still had those books (I left them in Russia due to lack of room in my suitcases), as they provided a fascinating glimpse into how people in the early part of the twentieth century expected the future to turn out. One of the books held a collection of short stories, one of which was set in the future, and centered around the conflict which had arisen between people who preferred wheels (cars) and those who preferred feet. In one scene, a man whose legs had shrunk to useless flippers tried to run down a grandmother who dared to cross the street on foot. The grandmother, in turn, dropped her bag of groceries, whipped out a large handgun, and blasted away at the approaching windshield. Both driver and grandmother were killed. The tale definitely implied that the advent of the automobile would bring about the end of civilization. Can you imagine?