Science fiction pioneer and futurist Hugo Gernsback was a man who dared to dream big. And making big predictions meant that he was going to whiff huge every now and again.
So for every one of his technological divinations that actually came to pass, there were some stray oddball ideas, like the oxygen-tank-requiring face prison to boost office productivity. And in the 1964 issue of Sexology magazine, Gernback provided a doozy of a notion to ameliorate race relations in America forever.
In his Report from the Future column — in which Gernsback provided news tidbits from the decades to come — he foretold of a late 21st century when socioeconomic considerations took the backseat to simply dyeing everybody an inoffensive shade of eggshell.
Missing the boat so badly he turned into Rip Van Winkle, Gernsback noted, "Within two generations the offspring of colored people in the U.S. [will become] white, thereby removing a basic source of friction."
Gernsback failed to mention that we'd have to raid the Fortress of Solitude and steal Superman's technology to kickstart this bold new era. (For whatever it's worth, this piece was paired with Gernsback's prediction of the future prevalence of sex selection research.) And to those readers whose skin is not borderline translucent, we're sorry that your great-grandchildren will end up with the complexion of Poppin' Fresh.
Via Modern Mechanix. Image via.