News from WFS: Renewal at THE FUTURIST Magazine

By Edward Cornish, Founding Editor

For 44 years, I have had the privilege of serving as Editor of THE FUTURIST magazine. I would like to thank all of you for your support during our journey along the frontiers of the future. It has been a thrilling ride, but the time has come for me to retire as Editor and assume a new role at THE FUTURIST.

So, starting with this issue, your editor will be Cynthia G. Wagner, who has served as Managing Editor of THE FUTURIST since 1992.

In my new role, I plan to act as a futurist-in-residence. After thinking and writing about the future for more than four decades, I believe I have learned some things about foresight and I would like to pass them on to readers of THE FUTURIST through the articles I plan to write.

The study of the future is a pioneering field that is still developing. The World Future Society today is, I believe, only a foreshadowing of what it could become in the future. As futurists, we can make major contributions to the improvement of human life around the world. This is an awe-inspiring challenge but one worthy of our best efforts.

Our New Editor

Cindy Wagner came to THE FUTURIST as an editorial assistant in 1981. She has a bachelor’s degree in English from the prestigious Grinnell College in Iowa and a master’s degree in communications, specializing in magazine journalism, from Syracuse University’s S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. Right from the start, she proved to be a highly capable editor and quickly developed into an outstanding one. When it came time to recommend a successor I could think of no one better qualified than Cindy to replace me as Editor.

Timothy C. Mack, president of the World Future Society, shares my enthusiasm for Cindy and has given her his full support.

Adding further to my confidence in the future of THE FUTURIST is the fact that we have in the last six years added three talented journalists to the staff. They are senior editor Patrick Tucker, who also serves as the Society’s director of communications, and staff editors Aaron M. Cohen and Rick Docksai, who also work diligently on the Society’s journal for professional members, World Future Review. In addition, we have on staff Lisa Mathias, a highly talented artist, as our Art Director.

All in all, THE FUTURIST has never had such a strong editorial staff, so I have never been more confident of the future of our magazine. We hope that you will continue to share our journey into the future.

THE FUTURIST versus the World Future Society

Some readers may wonder, “Which came first—THE FUTURIST or the World Future Society?” The fact is that they were born almost simultaneously and either one can claim priority.

Here’s why. Back in 1966, I prepared a six-page newsletter providing news about new scientific discoveries and the ideas that scientists and other thoughtful people were expressing about the future. I decided to call this newsletter THE FUTURIST and sent copies of it to people I thought might be interested. These people included comprehensive designer Buckminster Fuller, physicist Herman Kahn (author of On Thermonuclear War and other prescient works), science writer Arthur C. Clarke, science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov, and Glenn T. Seaborg, the Nobel Prize–winning discoverer of plutonium.

In my newsletter, I invited the recipients to join me in establishing an organization devoted to the study of the future. To my surprise and delight, a number of well-known people actually responded to my mailing with a keen interest in what I was doing.

Furthermore, a few of the respondents lived in the Washington, D.C., area where I lived, so I could easily invite them to lunch and try to enlist their support for the project. Happily, several people responded and one, Charles W. Williams, said he could arrange space for a meeting in his suite at the National Science Foundation. This was perfect: We would be born in one of the world’s most prestigious scientific organizations. That fact, I hoped, would counter the view that people interested in the future were exclusively science-fiction fans or perhaps something weird.

As our plans for the proposed World Future Society began to take shape, we started preparing for its official launch, but we immediately encountered a big problem: We needed money if we were going to do anything. So we decided we would have to ask members of our new Society to pay modest dues and also to pay for their own lunches at our first meeting. Fortunately, a number of attendees were willing to do so.

This policy made the Society economically viable, though money would remain even to today a serious limitation on what the Society could do.

Slowly and erratically, we received membership applications and dues income while avoiding every possible expense by doing almost everything we could by ourselves. We pressed family members and colleagues into providing free labor for humble projects such as typing and stuffing envelopes. My wife, Sally, and our neighbors, friends, and children all were enlisted into doing Society chores.

So with a little money and lots of free labor, the newborn World Future Society—and its modest newsletter—could just barely manage to pay the bills. The Society’s membership gradually grew; though lack of money continued to dog us, we were able to survive and even grow.

To boost revenue, I decided we needed to offer members something more than just a crudely printed newsletter. So I decided to expand the newsletter, despite knowing nothing about typesetting, layout, art, and other skills needed for magazine publishing, and despite still having almost no money to pay suppliers for these services. However, I managed to recruit an unemployed friend who had had some experience in publishing, and with his help we produced the first issue of THE FUTURIST as a magazine (the March-April 1967 issue).

To our great joy, the response to this first issue was very encouraging and allowed us to persevere. We continued to improve the magazine and keep the World Future Society alive, but it was never easy.

Today, the members of the Society can take pride in what we have accomplished so far. We have come a long way, but I believe we have enormous opportunities to develop into a far stronger Society with an increasingly influential magazine that can help the people of the world toward a far better future than any known in the past.

To read more about the birth of WFS and THE FUTURIST, go to www.wfs.org/content/search-for-foresight.