The Future Is Not What It Used...
Thursday 7 August 2008 23:00-23:15 (Radio 3)
...to Be. As a child of the 1950s, Richard Foster thought that by now he would be wearing a silver jumpsuit and spending endless hours of leisure zooming around on a personal jet-propelled backpack - all in a world where poverty, sickness and religion had been banished by technology. So what went wrong?
Playlist:
3/3. Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid
Richard investigates the threat of nuclear and environmental holocaust, explored in novels such as Neville Shute's On the Beach and John Christopher's The Death of Grass. Is the appetite for apocalypse - religious or scientific - now fed by ecological concern and terrorism? Must we always live in fear, or is it a potent political tool?
