All serious science shows designed for children in the fifties, sixties, seventies, and even the eighties—the Scientific Americans, the educational TV programs, the planetarium shows in national museums—all the authoritative voices who told us what the universe was like and why the sky was blue, who explained the periodic table of elements, also assured us that the future was indeed going to involve colonies on other planets, robots, matter transformation devices, and a world much closer to Star Trek than to our own.
