Arthur C. Clarke's July 20, 2019 : A Day in the Life of the 21st Century

By Arthur C. Clarke

Book Overview

Take a guided tour of the future and behold a spectacular panorama of how life will be in the twenty-first century. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0246129808
• ISBN13: 9780246129802
• Release Date: January 1
• Publisher: Grafton
• Length: 288 Pages

Customer Reviews

An excellent and believable future projection.

If you want a typical Clarke yarn, this is not the book you're looking for. However, if you'd like to see where a careful extrapolation of existing technology and trends would lead, this is incredible. Any writer can make up his own future; but few have taken the time and effort to project what the near future will be like both imaginatively and realistically. Clarke picks several aspects of daily life and writes a chapter each, about life 23 years in the future.You must read this with its release date in mind - 1986 - because that's what makes it so compelling. Clarke's projections are firmly based on actual trends and emerging technologies of that decade. This is not so much a "what if" story as it is one of "where will such-and-such really lead?" His depiction of hospital care is deliberate if a bit dry; the Europe-based third world war is a miniature thriller; and only once does he really depart into a fantasy style. One chapter is nothing so much as a nod to Edgar Allen Poe, and is creepy enough to make you swear off any kind of home automation. But even in that chapter, the specific gadgets and technological capabilities are completely plausible. That's what makes this an engaging book.