July - August issue editorial by Thierry Heles, editor

Futurology is an inherently tricky but fascinating field – get it right and you are hailed a visionary, get it wrong and people will either forget or turn it into a joke. One of the former is science fiction author HG Wells’ prediction of aerial city bombardment in his future-history novel The Shape of Things to Come. One of the latter is a prediction by the New York Times in 1936 that “a rocket will never be able to leave…