The Real Future: Tomorrow's Technology Today

by T.A. Heppenheimer

Will we run out of energy sources in the near future?

Can American industry regain its former strength in the world market?

Will genetic manipulation change the human race?

How close are we to World War III?

How drastically will the world change for the generation succeeding ours?

Here, the noted futurist and author of Colonies in Space takes the reader on a guided tour of the foreseeable future pausing, as indicators of its probable direction, at some significant guideposts in the recent past.

What Dr. Heppenheimer shows goes beyond theory and speculation to provide a comprehensive and thoroughly researched account of just where current trends are leading us. Science, technology, and industry, he says, are (and will be) the principal agents for changes that are bound to come, and he discusses the roots of the present state of these arts and some of the problems facing them.

295 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Thomas A. Heppenheimer (January 1, 1947 – September 9, 2015) holds a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from the University of Michigan, and is an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He has held research fellowships in planetary science at California Institute of Technology and at the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg, Germany.

He has been a freelance writer since 1978. He has written extensively on aerospace, business and government, and the history of technology. He is a frequent contributor to American Heritage and its affiliated publications, and to Air & Space. He has also written for the National Academy of Sciences, and contributed regularly to Mosaic of the National Science Foundation. He has written some 300 published articles for more than two dozen publications.