The Future Impossible
October 19, 2012 § Leave a comment
With word that Newsweek will be ceasing its print publication at the end of the year (more a loss for Americana, in my opinion, than America, given that lately it has been a newsmagazine in name only), a small detail from a scene in my first published story becomes problematic. The story is set in the immediate future, and there’s a description of a cover of the magazine that’s in the E.R. waiting room: it features the astronauts that take part in the mission to Mars that’s the backdrop to the story.
I had a hunch something like this would happen when I wrote it. It also has Anderson Cooper and Keith Olbermann both hosting cable news shows (on different channels), and John Glenn still alive and giving commentary. Glenn is 91 now, and if, as I’m told by my friends who follow such things, we’re looking at another 30 years before boots on Martian soil, then apparently we’re supposed to believe that other amazing technological breakthroughs have taken place on the geriatric medicine front.
Neil Serven 
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