Abstract
Instead of offering a predictive “history” of the future, this essay explores how we arrive at our attitudes toward the future and the effects of such attitudes toward current practice. We greet the future with attitudes prepared by myths, master narratives that guide our vision of who we are and what we are becoming. One key myth in our discipline, the myth of immediate communication, proves an unreliable guide to the future. Readings in science fiction serve to demonstrate how a critique of the immediacy myth might proceed. The essay argues for a critically informed, open‐minded approach to the future, an approach that encourages an honest self‐criticism within the discipline.