The Apocalypse And Other Prediction Books

Barnes and Nobles's Inspirational and Spiritual books.
Science Fiction and Fantasy
** FREE SHIPPING FOR ALL CUSTOMERS - Buy two or more items, and Barnes & Noble will give you FREE shipping! This offer applies to everything they sell, including all the latest books, movies, and CDs.**




"Of all other stupendous inventions, what sublimity of mind must have been his who conceived how to communicate his most secret thoughts to any other person, though very far distant either in time or place, speaking with those who are in the Indies, speaking to those who are not yet born, nor shall be this 1000 or 10,000 years? And with no greater difficulty than the various arrangement of two dozen little signs upon paper? Let this be the seal of all the admirable inventions of man." -Galileo




'What predictions did science fiction ever put on the table that came true?'" -
This is not the right question, says Robert Sawyer, science fiction writer. "What were we able to avoid because we predicted it?" says Sawyer, pointing out that George Orwell's classic novel 1984 provided the "big brother" metaphor that has arisen virtually every time there has been an issue concerning the erosion of individual rights by a government. "

Readers' appetite for books on the Middle East, terrorism and Islam has surged over the past months as they try to make sense of the events of recent days.

"Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War," by three veteran reporters for The New York Times. "Biological weapons are easier to make than nuclear weapons and deadlier than chemical ones. The worst-case scenarios involve the dissemination of genetically engineered ''superbugs'' that are lethal, contagious and untreatable. As the authors point out, an attack could happen almost invisibly."

"Acts of God" (Oxford, $27.50) - a fresh look at natural disasters - so-called 'acts of God'. "Historian Ted Steinberg suggests that headline-making winds, floods and earthquakes often become "disasters" because mankind has set the stage for destruction of property and loss of life. The poor are more likely to live in flood plains or trailer parks, he says. The wealthy are more likely to receive insurance payouts to rebuild their luxury homes along hurricane-prone coasts. And the media will probably stand ready with hyperbole about Mother Nature's punishing hand."


JULY 2001:

``Gems of Wisdom Heart of Gold: Inspiration from the Past for People of the Future,'' Javed Mohammed's book of Islamic sayings, is aimed at all youths -- not just Muslims -- and especially to those searching for their identity.


JUNE 2001:

Do SAT Scores Really Predict Success? Most studies find the correlation between the Scholastic Assessment Test and college is not overwhelming.


MAY 2001:

"The Wisdom of Menopause" by Dr. Christiane Northrup. The simultaneous transition into menopause of some 40 million North American baby boomers will unleash a powerful social "volcano," says a U.S. gynecologist whose new book about women at midlife is surging up best-seller lists. She suggests the "unprecedented" midlife transformation of tens of millions of "educated, vocal, sophisticated" women will send yet another shudder through the institution of marriage but will also infuse North American life with a rich new source of social advocacy, political power and creative energy.

"Disaster! The Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906 " - by Dan Kurzman. Just after 5 a.m. on April 18, 1906, an earthquake measuring 8.3 on the Richter scale ripped through sleeping San Francisco, toppling buildings, exploding gas mains, and trapping thousands of citizens beneath tons of stone, broken wood, and twisted metal. Drawing on meticulously researched and eye-witness accounts, Dan Kurzman re-creates one of the most horrific events of the 20th century.

"Left Behind" series, by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. Churches are split in their reactions to the books, which feature the Rapture, in which millions of God-fearing people are zapped instantly into Heaven; a Russian antichrist; and a computer chip implant as the mark of the beast. The central characters, left behind after the Rapture, get a second chance at salvation. The books move chronologically from the Rapture through seven years of tribulation, adopting notions from the final section of the Christian Bible, the Book of Revelation. . The series, originally planned as seven books culminating in 2000, will roll out its ninth installment this summer.


APRIL 2001:

"Dreaming the Future," by Clifford Pickover provides a tour through the wondrous ways people have peered into their tomorrows. He tells of "tiromancy, a popular practice in the Middle Ages. Practitioners made predictions based on the shape of holes in Swiss cheese. Then there was alphitomancy: the use of special food to detect criminals; barley would prove digestible to the innocent and sicken the guilty. And bletonomancy: divination by observing the currents of streams and rivers. And cromniomancy: predications based on onion sprouts. And myomancy: the study of rodent behaviors to predict the future. And scarpomancy: divination by observing someone's old shoes...Taking us through hundreds of examples, Pickover solidly makes his point: Prophecy is inseparable from human history."
Pickover's web page - cosmic questions, mysteries, puzzles, his books, etc.

DECEMBER 2000:

The Monitor's quarterly review of bestselling religion books convey the resurgent interest in religion and spirituality.

Amid the shopping and the cooking and the traveling and the greeting, make some quiet time this month for a little collection of essays called "The Force of Spirit" by Scott Russell Sanders. (Beacon 175 pp., $22 )

Doom or Gloom for the Economy? That depends on which prophet you put your faith in."WHen they peer into their crystal balls, futurists Harry S. Dent ('The Roaring 2000s') and Ravi Batra ('The Crash of the Millennium')see vastly different visions of the new decade."

NOVEMBER 2000:

"TARGET EARTH: The Search for Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets that Threaten Our Planet" (Reader's Digest; November 2000; $24.95) by Duncan Steel. "Earth-crossing asteroids pose a major hazard to the future of civilization. It is not a matter of if an impact will occur; it is merely a question of when." Steel's 1995 book "Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets" was used in the making of the blockbuster films "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact."

"It's Getting Better All the Time: 100 Greatest Trends of the Last 100 Years" - by Stephen Moore, an economist and the director of fiscal policy studies at the Cato Institute, a Washington think tank. Among other positive trends, he says that Americans are far less likely to perish in a catastrophic disaster now than just a few decades ago. Over the past 50 years, the rate of death from catastrophic accidents--accidents in which five or more people are killed--has fallen from about 10 per million people per year to 2.5 per million. Likewise, the chances of dying in a natural disaster--such as an earthquake, hurricane or tornado--have steadily dropped. More accurate weather forecasting, improved construction techniques and better emergency services explain the decline.


SEPTEMBER 2000:

Author Gregg Braden says his research led him to a lost form of prayer. He believes this prayer form is key to averting the doomsday scenarios of war, disease and tragedy that prophets through the ages have predicted for the early years of the 21st century. "We now know that predictions offer isolated possibilities. We also know that we choose our possibilities with each breath that we take, in each moment of every day," he said.

Book buyers who also use the Net don't believe electronic books will replace the paper kind, according to a new survey. And a substantial number said they weren't even aware of the new medium.

Robo Sapiens: Evolution of a New Species - By Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio, MIT Press, 240 pp., $29.95
There has always been a magical quality to machines that take on human form. "The delights of Robo Sapiens start with its clever title, which could refer to either the "new species" of synthetic beings emerging from today's laboratories or the existing species that is so obsessed with building them. I prefer the latter, for while this is a book chock full of arresting images and information about the current state of robotics, it teaches you even more about the dreams and illusions of the roboticists."

Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures - by Mary Baker Eddy "has a proven, century-long heritage of improving the health and changing the lives of millions of readers around the world. Today, it remains one of the most effective and enduring books on spirituality and healing. This is a book for thinkers. Whatever your occupation, education, race, or religion, you may have many reasons for reading this book. Perhaps you are exploring the power of prayer. Maybe you are seeking health and well-being. Or perhaps you are questioning the deeper purpose of your existence. Regardless of the reason, you will be rewarded with answers that will enrich your life. To begin to think and live from a spiritual standpoint is to change and improve everything -- health, ethics, relationships."


AUGUST 2000:
'The Water in Between" - by Kevin Patterson. "Eloquent and haunting in its language and evocation of traveling an inner life, Patterson has written a true manifesto against the oft-preached notion that heartache can be run from, that time itself can salve a broken heart. In his wisdom the author accepts that travel itself, while broadening the mind, should not be expected to heal all wounds, for "Aching is part of the beauty of the world."

The creator of science fiction TV series Babylon 5 is turning to the web to publish his latest work. J Michael Straczynski is planning to make his latest novel, 'Tribulations', available in four limited-life instalments that can be downloaded from the web.

JULY 2000:

Calculating God - by Robert J. Sawyer. "A present-day Toronto paleontologist is drawn into the debate over God's existence when aliens land at the Royal Ontario Museum to examine fossil evidence contained in a Burgess Shale collection that seems to prove that the universe was created. The paleontologist, Dr. Thomas Jericho, struggles with this affront to both his atheism and his utter conviction that science provides all the answers needed to explain the existence of life, the universe and everything. "

The Golden Book of Light" - by Dennis Williams, a student of the great master Paramahansa Yogananda and a member of Self-Realization Fellowship. The book is a new mystical commentary on the Holy Bible that shows that the Hebrew prophets did practice a meditative technique to reach a higher state of consciousness. The book covers topics on meditation, philosophy, Kabbala, self-realization, kriya yoga, Jewish Mysticism, and much more.

"The Day John Died" by Christopher Andersen. "In the latter years of her life, Jackie had a recurring premonition that John would be killed piloting his own plane. She pleaded with Maurice [Tempelsman, her longtime companion] to do whatever it took to keep John from becoming a pilot."

JULY 2000:

'The Tipping Point' - by Malcolm Gladwell. "Many huge trends are started by a few people or a few small changes that cause a population to start acting differently...such changes are the subject of this well-researched, fascinating look at how everyday people's lives are affected by small changes that they probably don't often think about."

JUNE 2000:

"Author J.T. LeRoy is sitting in an apartment off San Francisco's Polk Street, waiting for doomsday and talking on the phone. ``I think a lot about disasters,'' he says in his tremulous Southern drawl. ``Earthquakes. Meteor showers. There's so many people to worry about.''

"The Age of Access: The New Culture of Hypercapitalism Where All of Life is a Paid-For Experience" (Tarcher/Putnam, 2000) - by Jeremy Rifkin. "The Age of Access" roams from Disney's planned Celebration community in Florida to the origins of Algerian "rai" music; from John Locke to George Gilder; from the ancient Greeks to modern Hollywood... Rifkin is our Jeremiah, possibly our Cassandra."

Books, articles about faith -- and lack thereof

E-books will challenge paper, e-publishers predict. Electronic books offer even the most mundane authors a forum and may some day overtake books read on paper.


MAY 2000:
''PASTORALIA' ' - by George Saunders. A story collection discovers the future in the present.

Primal Dreams - The Icelandic myths of Halldór Laxness.

APRIL 2000:
Science Fiction books reviewed by the New York Times

A PLACE FOR GOD by Timothy Jones, offers the author's accounts of spiritual retreats he has taken including activities and fees. Includes places such as the Abbey of Gethsemani Retreat House and the Bishop's Ranch in Healdsburg, California.

MARCH 2000:

THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS by Arthur C. Clarke. The story explores the kind of ideas you find yourself thinking about days, even weeks afterward. A technology called WormCam uses quantum physics to transmit images through time and space - a billion TV cameras are able to travel through walls, following everyone - they can even see backward through time. People discover there was no Betsy Ross, no aliens at Roswell, no Moses. It follows Jesus as he makes his way through life and then death. And then go farther back, through the ice ages, the Neanderthals, all the way back to single-cell life and then the Earth devolving. "Then to the absolute beginnings of our kind, and a final, aching and utterly unexpected image." (review by Elizabeth Weise - USA Today)

"Whether or not Stephen King's newest book will strike terror in the hearts of its readers, it has already sparked imaginative thoughts about the future. It is an e-book, and although this is not the first to appear on the Internet, this is the first time a new work by a popular novelist has been published exclusively electronically. Is publishing about to change then? Will books made of ink on paper ultimately go the way of buggy whips? "

"THE PLATO PAPERS"- "In his 'prophetic' examination of how the future might be and how that future might view the past, Peter Ackroyd rewards the ambitious and intelligent reader on every page. Set in the 'Age of Witspell,' about 3700 AD, the story centers on London's most famous orator, Plato, as he talks about the past and compares it to his own present...According to Ackroyd's prophecy, human evolution caused a great metamorphosis in the human body and also caused the sun and the stars to disappear from the heavens once we doubted them. And perhaps most provocative to somebody reading this in the year 2000, Ackroyd entertains the notion that almost all of the knowledge and information (novels, poetry, film, research studies, etc.) that we have amassed is wiped out at one point."

FEBRUARY 2000:

THE CHANGE IN THE WEATHER - PEOPLE, WEATHER, AND THE SCIENCE OF CLIMATE by William Stevens. He begins with the formation of the Earth's unusual climate 4.6 billion years ago, continues through the present day and looks ahead to the year 2100. By the end of his careful examination , one fact is clear: when it comes to climate, nothing is clear - unless you live in Alaska. Alaska is the "premier bellweather region for climate in the U.S.". Alaska's average temperature has risen three to five times more than in the lower 48 states. The effect of the warming trend is stark - half the white spruce that grew there in 1985 are dead today. Whole mountainsides look dead, and in fact are. Alaska's Columbia Glacier has receded 8 miles, ending a 70 year period of stability. Climate joins all parts of the shrinking globe in chaotic and surprising ways - Alaska's thawing may become a Texas tornado.

THE CHRIST CLONE TRILOGY- a series of novels that dramatizes the End Times dramas outlined in Revelation. James BeauSeignur is the author. ((His special twist: A Christ clone is developed from cells scraped off the Shroud of Turin, but he goes bad.)

5/5/2000 - by Richard W. Noone.The book that predicts the Earth's crust will shift grotesquely on May 5, 2000, as part of a series of planetary upheavals that usher in a new Ice Age. A solar storm will reach its peak this spring, just prior to the larger May 5 calamity. "A billion-ton wave of superhot, electrically charged gas will be ejected from the sun and crash into the Earth's magnetic field at 620 miles per second," he says. "The coming Solar Max will disrupt radio, telephone, satellites, airlines."

Death Foretold: Prophecy and Prognosis in Medical Care by Nicholas Christakis - proposes that prognostication for a patient's future evokes awe and mystery because it casts the physician in the role of prophet. Many physicians are overwhelmed by the power and responsibility of such a role and attempt to flee altogether. Yet, Christakis concludes, physicians -- like prophets -- have a moral duty to predict the future and must find appropriate ways to do so.

A WOMAN'S JOURNEY TO GOD: Finding the Feminine Path - by Joan Borysenko. (Riverhead Books, $23.95) It explores the differences between religion and spirituality and how women can find the spiritual path even if they rejected their childhood faith years ago. It affirms that, particularly for women, life and spirituality are one and the same.

JESUS: APOCALYPTIC PROPHET OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM." Author Bart D. Ehrman argues that the historical Jesus was less a gentle moralist who taught a message of love than a white-hot visionary who warned his contemporaries that the end of the world was nigh. "Jesus thought that the history of the world would come to a screeching halt, that God would intervene in the affairs of this planet, overthrow the forces of evil in a cosmic act of judgment and establish his utopian Kingdom on Earth," explains Ehrman. "And this was to happen within Jesus' own generation."

JANUARY 2000:

RARE EARTH - by paleontologist Peter Ward and astronomer Donald Brownlee, describes the unlikely conditions under which microbial and, later, advanced life evolved on Earth. The remarkable combination of just the right conditions was so rare, they write, that is probably has not happened anywhere else in the cosmos. The book challenges the idea, set forth by the late astronomer Carl Sagan, that the universe potentially hosts millions of advanced alien civilizations.

ATLANTIS FOUND by Clive Cussler - (Fiction) - When mysterious black obsidian skulls and other artifacts of an exceedingly ancient culture begin to turn up in odd places, Dirk Pitt jumps in with both feet. It soon becomes dangerously apparent that a powerful, amoral group of fanatics calling itself the Fourth Empire wants the strange discoveries to remain underground. Pitt teams up with a beautiful red-haired expert in ancient languages to decipher the meaning of the artifacts. They were made 10 millennia ago in a then-temperate Antarctica by a seafaring civilization advanced enough to predict its own destruction by a comet impact. Now the Fourth Empire (whose literal and figurative progenitor comes as no surprise) is predicting a similar disaster in only a matter of months, and preparing to take control of the earth.

THE CARBON WAR by oilman-turned-environmentalist Jeremy Leggett. "As the world's weather grows warmer and deadlier, uneasy public opinion is starting to see climate change as the ugly legacy of the oil era...Leggett argues that oil companies are sowing the seeds of their own demise if they continue to dismiss the fight against global warming. "We are seeing the first faint signals of how bad it can get," Leggett told Reuters, referring to the mudslides that killed as many as 30,000 in Venezuela and storms that battered France last month.

Science fiction is facing up to cyber-reality - Computers play bigger role in our vision of the future. Once, the Internet was the stuff of science fiction. Now, sci-fi is the stuff of the Internet as writers and fans turn to the Web to revive the genre that gave birth to the very term "cyberspace."

In "BUTTERFLY ECONOMICS: A New General Theory of Social and Economic Behavior." Paul Ormerod introduces a new kind of model based on a view of society as a living organism and underpinned by the mathematics of nonlinear probability. As he writes, his image of the butterfly "draws upon popular ideas of chaos theory, in which the beating of the wings of a butterfly can in principle cause a tornado on the other side of the globe." "Butterfly Economics" is written for "members of the general public," as the author puts it. It is accessible and even entertaining, avoiding the mathematics on which its ideas are based (except in the appendices).

A team of international experts say they have cracked the apocalyptic code hidden in the biblical Book of Revelation -- and uncovered the truth about the end of the world! In 'Cracking the Apocalypse Code', (Element Books, $22.95 - available in January) Gerard Bodson and his researchers explain how they used a method of coding that uses the numerical correspondences of the Hebrew alphabet as its key to unveil the first hidden message within The Book of Revelation. Identifying a second 'beast' who is among us now, Bodson reveals that he will lead China and its close ally, North Korea, in a nuclear attack at noon on February 5, 2043 that will destroy Japan. In retaliation, the United States and her allies will launch a counterattack. The Middle East and its precious oil resources will become the stage for the last battle -- Armageddon.

DECEMBER 1999:

"PREDICTIONS" is a look at the 21st centruury as envisioned by scientists, writers and philosophers, set for release early next year in the U.S. Arthur C. Clarke ('2001: A Space Odyssey') forecasts space travel by prince Charles' youngest son, Harry; humans on Mars by 2021; two intelligent species on Earth after 2020 - humans and one evolving from artificial intelligence.W. French Anderson, sometimes called the father of gene therapy, boldly predicts that gene-based therapy will revolutionize medical practice by 2030. Linguist and author Noam Chomsky is perhaps the most downbeat, wondering "whether humans are a kind of lethal mutation."

Literature in the Next Millennium: Predictions - by Tim Parks "Will there be literature in the next millennium? Do we really need it? When you think about it, with the spread of interactive electronic media, a man alone in his own home will never have been so well-placed to fill the inexplicable mental space between cradle and crematorium....And in this promising scenario it seems only right that something so unnecessary as books should be pushed more and more into those moments of travel or difficult defecation that people still don't quite know what to do with."

HOT NEW MICHAEL CRICHTON BOOK. (author of "Jurassic Park" and many others) His new book, "Timeline," combines a science of the future -- the emerging field of quantum technology -- with the complex realities of the medieval past. In short, it's a real mind-bender.

"Deadline Y2K: A Novel" - by Mark Joseph. The story charts the crisis as "everything from toys to nuclear power plants begin to crash, bringing on havoc worthy of a Godzilla film."

Expert's Picks: Books On Religion

"Y2K - It's Already Too Late" - by Jason Kelly. A novel that claims to be "based on evidence from congressional testimony, military documents and reports from computing experts."

Jason Epstein has been in the business for over half a century. He was one of the original founders of The New York Review of Books and at Random House has edited some of the great literary giants, including Norman Mailer and E.L. Doctorow. He predicts three inventions are set to change the publishing industry: The Internet, the e-book, and books printed on demand. Epstein envisions authors who won't need or want publishers. He predicts that authors will handle their own marketing or outsource it, and will communicate directly with their readers. "Publishing has been a one-way business for the last hundred years. The Internet is going to make it a two-way business," he said.

NOVEMBER 1999:

``ENGINEERING TOMORROW,'' commissioned by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, assesses the future of engineering and its possible effects on society. Another wave of engineering innovations is coming, and even engineers are concerned about our ability to cope with, for example, wearable computers, personal radar and the family airplane. Their excitement over the technological dreams of the 21st century is tempered by a realization that as the world moves faster, more and more people aren't able to keep up. ``The overwhelming amount of information we are expected to absorb is constantly doubling,'' said Robert Lucky. They foresee personal radar capable of looking through walls like Superman, a very smart personal computer, cheap easy-to-fly family airplanes and a Dick Tracy-style wrist Internet link that could be used to chat with friends as far away as Mars. Beyond the gadgets and gizmos, the experts also predict major shifts in the way we use energy, from fossil fuels such as gasoline to new forms of portable, pollution-free personal power and even a revival of nuclear power to generate electricity. ``Nuclear energy will become a more acceptable source of energy, because the emissions are essentially zero,'' said John Kassakian, a professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He argues that nuclear wastes are less dangerous and easier to manage than air pollution. Kassakian also theorized that cars will be able to store enough electricity to quit running on gasoline.


"THE LONG BOOM" - by Peter Leyden, Joel Hyatt and Peter Schwartz; is a new book that sketches in broad strokes an economic future blessed by plenty and free of want. It is a vision for a coming age of prosperity. It pictures a world free of poverty, disease and strife.

"PREDICTIONS" pulls together the disparate thoughts of 30 great minds, from economist J.K. Galbraith to writer Umberto Eco and feminist Andrea Dworkin. "This is all hugely exciting. These are the ideas of some of the world's most distinguished academics at the close of the millennium," said Sian Griffiths, editor of "Predictions." In the century about to dawn, contraception will become superfluous, the attention span will cease to exist and two intelligent species will roam the earth.Sex will be just for lust -- babies will come from reproductive bank accounts -- while phones and faxes will be dumped in favor of direct mind-to-mind communication. Come 2010, according to the often-prescient Arthur C Clarke, Prince Harry will become the first member of Britain's royal family to fly in space. Lights will be turned on at the flick of a thought -- switches will be consigned to history. Despite the breakthroughs envisioned -- Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe harbors hopes for an end to turmoil in Africa, while others see machines developing minds of their own in a challenge to human intelligence -- Griffiths said the overall mindset was gloomy. "There's a sense that we'll be struggling all the time, trying to do new things, but with a sense of disaster looming," she said. "I get the sense from these predictions that there is limited time span for human beings unless we change."

"The end or the beginning? A premillennial time stirs nightmares of an apocalypse and dreams of the future - "How fragile are our lives as we know them? Is some sort of social breakdown a real possibility? Next year, or in the next hundred years, will we find ourselves depending on backyard gardens and windmills, our laptops, cell phones and intensive-care units a thing of the past?These visions are a staple not just of our nightmares but also of the post-Apocalypse science-fiction novel. Such books, vivid in the nuclear 1970s, are reappearing in this premillennial time. Their plots swarm around notable focal points: gender, imperialism, tolerance, technology, the confrontation of good and evil. And as in the '70s, many are electrified by feminist visions, with strong heroines and a redefinition of gender roles. "

Religious Publishers Get Grip on the Apocalypse

HOW WE BELIEVE: THE SEARCH FOR GOD IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE by Michael Shermer -"At the beginning of the century, with scientific marvels appearing everywhere, some scientific observers predicted that the century's end would see a decisive decline in religious belief. As prophets, they flopped. The river of scientific marvels is still in flood, but in America religion flourishes as never before. Why should that be? Michael Shermer, who teaches in the Cultural Studies program at Occidental College in Los Angeles, examines the question in a new book, How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science, a skeptical book examining the roots of religious belief .


REASON FOR HOPE by Jane Goodall -
"I hadn't thought about the millennium," says scientist-conservationist Jane Goodall. "I just think that people are searching for some kind of meaning, some are desperately searching for it, and this is sharing what I've found." Just published as a book (written in collaboration with Philip Berman), "Reason for Hope" is also a one-hour PBS TV special, narrated by Harrison Ford and set to air beginning Wednesday, October 27, 1999. (Check local PBS listings for exact dates and times in your area.) Though quasi-autobiographical in both book and TV forms, the project's title suggests its generally optimistic message. Its subtitle, "A Spiritual Journey," suggests how Goodall arrived at the message. In simple terms, the message asks us to look at the natural world through a spiritual window as well as a scientific one, and, finally, to make a moral commitment to preserving it. Goodall's predictions for the 21st century are mostly upbeat. True, she finds genetic engineering, genetically modified food and cloning "very scary things."


NEXT: TRENDS FOR THE NEAR-FUTURE by Marian Salzman - a study that identified single women as a retailing force to reckon with on an international scale.

Predicting the future has become a $200-billion-a-year industry, although almost all predictors have a track record no better than 50-50, according to William A. Sherden in his 1998 book, "THE FORTUNE SELLERS: THE BIG BUSINESS OF BUYING AND SELLING PREDICTIONS."

PREDICTIONS OF GEORGE ORWELL'S "1984" ARE PROVING RIGHT - June marked the 50th anniversary of the publication of "1984," George Orwell's timeless dystopian novel. David Ross, a journalist and science fiction writer, has collaborated with a specialist in Orwell's writings to compile a list of 137 predictions or indicators of the "total surveillance future" depicted in 1984. Of that number, more than 100 have been fulfilled, Ross claims.
"1984' can be a book of revelation about how scary things could become during the third millennium," Ross said in the June 15 Washington Times. "Based on this list of surveillance and computer technologies, Orwell's future has largely become fact. The more I read from the list, and the more snooping I observe into our personal affairs, and how the government even wants to read our e-mail, the more I see '1984' as an accurate revelation about the future." In Orwell's novel, observes the Times, "three giant superpowers — North America, Europe and China — rule the world. In each country, the central government maintains strict control over members of the only political party, monitoring their every thought and action through surveillance and computer technologies," a vision not dramatically different from the world presently coming into view. (James Franklin Rinehart - Deseret News)