The Crystal Age

Romances of the future, however fantastic they may be, have for most of us a perennial if mild interest, since they are born of a very common feeling - a sense of dissatisfaction with the existing order of things, combined with a vague faith in or hope of a better one to come. The picture put before us is false; we knew it would be false before looking at it, since we cannot imagine what is unknown any more than we can build without materials.