“EXTRAVAGANT fiction today, cold fact tomorrow” was the bold claim of Amazing Stories, the first of the American magazines devoted to science fiction. Beginning in the 1930s, these sci-fi pulps and comics envisaged that by the year 2000 we would be living in a world with domed underwater cities and travelling in flying cars and by jetpacks. Instead we have mobile phones, laptops and DVDs.
The predictions were off, says James Kakalios, because implicit in the promise of flying cars is the availability of lightweight power supplies capable of producing enormous quantities of energy. In fact, the capacity of batteries…
