After our first, quite successful conference, in 1971, when the World Future Society was five years old, my wife threw it out of the house. With new projects, new staff, and new visitors crowding our living space, things had gone too far. Finally, in the spring of 1972, Sally gave me an ultimatum. The Society had to go. The last straw came when staff members began using upstairs rooms while she was still in bed, depriving her of what little rest and privacy she still had.
We found some small office space in downtown Bethesda offered at an exceptionally low rent by a distressed landlord. We inspected the premises and immediately signed a lease.
The Society’s new premises were in a two-story red brick building, above a beauty parlor and a used-clothing store. To help furnish the offices, the Society’s pro bono lawyer, Bill Moore, donated three or four desks that he no longer needed for his law office, and we bought chairs at an auction of used furniture. Staff members contributed rugs and other items. So we soon had all the furniture we needed, and, for the first time, the Society took on the semblance of a serious enterprise.
Charles Williams, the Society’s vice president, inspected the premises and was quite impressed. Less impressed were visitors unfamiliar with our previous “headquarters.” They always expected something grander. But that didn’t bother us. We were proud and delighted with our new headquarters, especially the room we called the Members’ Lounge.
The Members’ Lounge had a large table plus chairs and bookshelves for displaying books about the future that visitors could buy. So it served as a small bookshop as well as a conference and reception room. To deal with book buyers and other visitors, we hired a recent widow named Julia Larson, who proved highly popular with visitors. When a blind member, Michael Esserman, came by to “see the books,” Julia made his visit so pleasant he came again and again. Once he brought his parents along, and we all had a nice chat together.
Next door to the Society’s new offices was a yoga parlor run by a German lady. Through the wall we could hear her disciples humming the Sanskrit holy word “Om” as they contemplated ultimate reality. Meanwhile, I had to contemplate a more urgent reality: How to pay the rent on our new offices.
The rent problem intensified some months later when the yoga lady vacated the space she was using and the landlord offered it to us. We did not need the space immediately, but we probably would within a year or two. Reluctantly, we decided we had to take it and immediately put it to some remunerative use if we could find one.
The best idea we could come up with to boost revenues was to use the extra space to give educational courses for which we could charge tuition. So we collaborated with our emerging Washington chapter in sponsoring an evening course on the future and sharing the proceeds. Joseph F. Coates, who had been the interviewer on the Society’s radio program, conducted the course with the help of another chapter member, Gregg Edwards. Both worked for the National Science Foundation (NSF), so they had ready access to the best scientists in America.
One lecturer was the nuclear physicist John H. Gibbons, who was so impressed with Joe Coates that, when Joe left NSF a year or so later, Gibbons hired him to work for the new Office of Technology Assessment that the U.S. Congress had created. It was the second time that Joe had gotten a job through the World Future Society: He had secured his National Science Foundation job after interviewing an NSF official, Joel Snow, on the Society’s radio program.
The course proved highly popular, but the revenues were meager, so we looked for other ways to improve our financial situation. An obvious way was to seek donations or grants. Though I had failed to raise much money myself, we could try harder to find members willing to take on this difficult task.
One person willing to pick up the challenge was an elderly businessman named Lloyd Luther. He had done fund-raising for a Washington church, and he appreciated our problem. So Peter Zuckerman, the Society’s secretary-treasurer, and I gave him our blessings, and Lloyd succeeded in obtaining an appreciable amount of money, but he was in poor health and soon died.
Later, Zuckerman and I met with another Society member, a retired U.S. Army colonel, who was willing to try to raise money for us. In the Army, the colonel said, he had gotten used to receiving challenging assignments and showing he could handle them. Unfortunately, getting people to give money for the future seemed to be harder than storming a nest of machine-gunners. The brave colonel retreated in defeat, leaving Zuckerman and me pretty much where we started.
Meanwhile, I tried hard to improve THE FUTURIST so that we could attract more members and subscribers. Since members paid dues, we might eventually have enough members to finance our operation properly. Our revenues from member dues and the sale of books were bringing in more money, making it seem possible that we might eventually outgrow our money problems.
On the other hand, the workload on the Society’s staff kept increasing. I couldn’t seem to work any faster myself, and I was neglecting many highly important tasks. So it was a considerable relief to me when Peter Zuckerman began working full time as the Society’s business manager. Peter’s job as a systems analyst for the System Development Corporation had ended, and he was willing to work full time for the Society at a much lower salary than he had been receiving.
Zuckerman took over from me the task of dealing with printers, compositors, mailing list brokers, and other business aspects of the Society, allowing me to focus more on THE FUTURIST, the Society’s chapters, and other programs. Peter eased my anxiety greatly: Whenever I went to him with a worrisome problem, he always accepted it with complete equanimity. He undertook a number of initiatives to increase the Society’s revenues. Since we hadn’t had much success getting advertising for THE FUTURIST, he arranged for a Los Angeles firm to solicit advertising for us. He also negotiated a deal with an insurance company so members could get life insurance through the Society. Unfortunately, the insurance company abruptly canceled the program when one of our participants died.
Peter and I also tried to get money from government agencies. We thought we saw an opportunity when the U.S. Congress established the American Revolution Bicentennial Commission to coordinate a celebration of America’s 200th birthday on July 4, 1976. Possibly, we surmised, the Commission might support a report on the outlook for America’s next 200 years. We did succeed in getting an audience with two different Commission officials, but they seemed to have no interest whatsoever in our idea. One staffer wanted only to support projects for blacks or other minorities. The other official sought only projects involving women. A project designed to benefit everybody, regardless of their race or sex, was of no interest whatsoever.
A year or so later, we lost more time trying to get support from the government. This time the government sought us out, rather than the reverse. An official working for the President’s Committee on Mental Retardation who had been impressed with our ability to organize a good meeting wanted us to arrange a conference looking at the future prospects of mentally retarded people. After we spent much time preparing a proposal, the official learned that such a project would have to be subjected to competitive bidding — a complex, time-consuming procedure that we could not afford to undertake. So we bowed out despite the pleas of the official we had been negotiating with.
Discouraged by our efforts to get donations or government money, I fell back on trying to improve THE FUTURIST. I also spent more time trying to support our chapters.
Society chapters began forming as early as 1967, with the earliest being the chapters in Minneapolis and Los Angeles. In the following years, chapters began appearing in other U.S. cities as well as in Canada and Europe, many of which planned and organized exceptional programs. The vitality of the newly organized Washington, D.C., chapter, for instance, made me more enthusiastic about developing the Society’s chapters, and I wished the Society had a chapter in New York City, which dominates America’s business, arts, and communications and hosts the United Nations. I needed to go to New York on Society business occasionally, and I also had personal reasons to visit the city since I had grown up in Manhattan and still had many friends there.
But I did nothing about establishing a chapter in New York until I got a call from Joel Brink, a young woman who lived in the Bronx. Joel had attended our 1971 conference, and while there had broken off her engagement to a Unitarian minister. She did not explain how or why her engagement had broken up, but she seemed to feel that if the Society could not supply her with a new fiancé, we might at least establish a New York chapter to provide social activities for the New York members.
I agreed to help, and on my next trip to New York I met with Joel and Brian Quickstad, whom we had been listing as the Society’s coordinator in New York City. Quickstad had done little to organize a chapter, and I figured he needed a push. Joel was just the sort of person to do the pushing.
Brian arranged for a meeting of the New York City members at the Mercer Arts Center in lower Manhattan, a part of the city I had not seen since my teenage years when I worked as a trucker’s helper delivering bolts of cloth to garment factories in the area. To speak at the meeting, I recruited Julius Stulman, a lumber magnate who had become one of the Society’s few financial contributors. I also spoke at the meeting — mainly to make it clear that we at headquarters could not help them. They had to help themselves if their chapter was to succeed. The New York City chapter was duly launched with Quickstad as president and Joel Brink as one of three vice presidents, and the chapter began holding regular meetings with impressive speakers.
Attending these meetings was a lecture agent named Patricia Hederman, one of whose clients was Isaac Asimov, a science and science-fiction writer whom I had long admired. Patricia persuaded Isaac to speak to the New York chapter, so I made a special trip to New York to hear him.
Pat Hederman arranged a private dinner with Asimov before he made his speech to the chapter, and on the evening of the meeting, she and I, plus Joel, taxied over to his apartment building to fetch him. While Pat went upstairs, Joel and I waited in the taxi, and I had a minute to think about what I would say to the famous writer. I knew that he had written a lot of books but wasn’t sure how many, so I put the question to him the moment he got in the cab.
“Two hundred forty-one with eight more in press!” Asimov responded without the slightest hesitation. I was even more impressed than I expected to be, not just with the total, but with his precision in keeping score.
At dinner, Isaac proudly showed the three of us his business card proving that he was a professor of biochemistry at Boston University. He said he kept his academic standing by giving the introductory lecture for the biochemistry students every year. “The kids don’t know it,” he confided, “but that’s the best lecture they’re going to get!” (Isaac did not suffer from false modesty.)
He also confided how he was able to write so many books: “Most writers like to get ideas for books and they like to have them published, but they don’t like what comes in between. I like what comes in between.”
After dinner, the four of us went to the chapter meeting where Asimov gave a splendid lecture on “How Predictive Is Science Fiction?” His answer: “Not very.” In most cases, he told us, science fiction is a humble follower of science fact. Scientists constantly discover things beyond the imagination of the writers, and what the fiction writers do say is mostly wrong.
That was the beginning of my friendship with Asimov. Years later, at the Society’s 1986 conference, I had the pleasure of presenting him with the Society’s Distinguished Service Award. After his death, his widow, Janet, became a life member of the Society.
Asimov was only one of the distinguished speakers who addressed the New York chapter, but after operating successfully for a number of years, the chapter faltered and collapsed, then revived and collapsed again.
The ups and downs of our chapters frustrated me enormously. Chapters can provide magnificent experiences for our members, but they depend on good leadership at the local level. There must be at least one person who is really dedicated to sustaining a chapter if it is to survive and prosper. Previous experience is unnecessary if a person is dedicated and has reasonably good judgment.
Despite the many problems that chapters often pose, they can achieve wonders in providing personal experiences with other futurists, including some of the world’s most fascinating people.
In 1973, Glenn Seaborg, our Nobel Prize–winning Board member, called me from Berkeley, California. He had become chairman of the 1974 conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco.
“Ed, I’ve got an idea,” Glenn began ominously. I say “ominously” because I had learned to worry when someone came to me with an idea. It generally meant more work for me, and that proved to be true in this case.
Glenn wanted me to organize a session on the future for the AAAS meeting. I didn’t like this idea one bit because I knew it would consume considerable time and money that neither I nor the Society could afford to lose. Furthermore, I had never organized a session for a meeting of scientists and doubted my ability to do it.
But I couldn’t say no to Glenn, who had done so much for us, so I quickly agreed. Once committed, I had to think how one goes about organizing a session for the world’s most prominent scientific society. Since I lived in the Washington area, I went to the headquarters of the AAAS to ask for guidance, but I couldn’t seem to get much practical help. So I plunged ahead on my own by making up a list of noted futurists and just calling them up to ask if they would be willing to participate in a session at the AAAS conference.
I first invited Roy Amara, president of the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, California, to chair the futurist session, since it would be easy for Roy to come to a meeting in San Francisco. I did not want to preside myself, because I wanted to tape-record and photograph the event in order to report on it for THE FUTURIST.
Happily, Roy Amara was willing, and I was also able to recruit Theodore Gordon, president of the Futures Group; Willis W. Harman of Stanford Research Institute; biophysicist John Platt; and Glenn Seaborg himself to speak at the session. Inviting Glenn was a kind of payback for making me do so much extra work!
I also sent an invitation to the legendary anthropologist Margaret Mead, because I knew she was president of the AAAS that year and might be at the San Francisco meeting. She was not a member of the World Future Society, but judging from her writings and speeches, I believed she was very interested in the future and always seemed to have interesting things to say. But she did not respond to my invitation.
The new San Francisco chapter of the World Future Society arranged an elegant reception and luncheon to be held just before the symposium. I was amazed by the initiative of the San Francisco chapter and found the event most enjoyable.
While I was talking to people at the reception, someone came up and told me that Margaret Mead was looking for me. Though quite startled, I quickly located her in the crowd, and we were soon chatting like old friends. Mead was a small woman, though plump, so I was quite amazed when she downed two sizeable highballs while we talked. Then we went together to what proved to be a very pleasant lunch; John Platt sat across the table from us but entered into our conversation occasionally. At the end of the meal, I expected to conduct Mead to the hall where our session was to be held, but Glenn Seaborg came over and started asking me questions about his presentation. While my attention was diverted, Mead disappeared without saying a word, and I had no idea where she had gone. I had miffed her — a blunder that I still regret.
When I arrived at the meeting hall, Mead was nowhere in sight. The other speakers milled around the speakers’ table as the crowd assembled, and it really was a crowd. Some 500 people packed into the room, making it one of the biggest sessions at the conference.
Amara started the program on schedule, and the presentations proceeded smoothly and uneventfully until he began bringing the session to a close, noting that Margaret Mead had been expected but had not arrived.
Suddenly, a murmur arose from the crowd!
“Oh, is she here?” exclaimed Amara.
Mead had been sitting unnoticed in the midst of the hundreds in the audience. At last she came forward and placed herself at the microphone. She then proceeded to give a forceful talk, despite — or perhaps because of — the two highballs, and quickly disappeared again into the crowd. I never saw her again, but I had successfully recorded her talk on tape, and we published it (with her corrections) along with the other presentations in THE FUTURIST (June 1974).
In 1973, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) announced an embargo on shipments of petroleum to nations that supported Israel, which had been attacked by Egypt and Syria. The result was a worldwide crisis in the United States and other nations dependent on OPEC petroleum. Overnight, frustrated motorists were forced to spend hours waiting at filling stations to get some of the limited amount of gasoline available. Fistfights broke out among impatient motorists.
Zuckerman and I decided that the Society could make a useful contribution to public understanding of energy issues by holding a public forum that would bring together knowledgeable people from industry, government, and academia to discuss the complexities of the energy situation. We believed that such a timely meeting might also produce some badly needed revenue. The Society’s first conference had been financially successful and our membership had grown considerably since then.
To chair the forum, I recruited Anton Schmalz, a management consultant who had served on the committee that planned our 1971 conference. To assist Schmalz, we hired Nancy McLane, a former employee of the Sierra Club in California. She and her husband were deeply committed to protecting the natural environment, an issue closely linked to the world’s soaring consumption of petroleum and other natural resources.
By early 1974, Anton and Nancy were hard at work preparing for what we billed as a Special Forum on “Energy: Today’s Choices, Tomorrow’s Opportunities.” Anton enlisted an impressive group of speakers, including James Lee, president of the Gulf Oil Corporation; Congressman Mike McCormack, the only scientist in the U.S. House of Representatives; representatives of the energy producing companies; and a variety of people outside the energy industry, such as psychologists, who might provide unique perspectives on energy issues.
Schmalz’s biggest triumph was recruiting Gerald Ford to speak at the luncheon on the first day of the Forum. President Richard Nixon had just appointed Ford vice president of the United States, replacing Spiro Agnew. Furthermore, Nixon was expected to resign soon due to the Watergate scandal, so Ford would automatically become the next U.S. president!
But despite our extraordinary program, registrations fell far below expectations, and Zuckerman and I soon realized that the Society was headed for a serious financial loss. To make matters worse, the printers had failed to deliver on schedule the copies of the book on energy issues that we had promised the attendees.
I became sick with worry that we were headed for a complete disaster and began screaming at Schmalz to pressure the printers to finish the job. He finally bribed them with triple their normal wages to work at night. Still, the books did not arrive until half an hour before the conference opened. But at least we had succeeded in delivering on our promise to the attendees.
Energy: Today’s Choices, Tomorrow’s Opportunities was the first book that the Society had published, and it was an impressive production with statements from 48 experts and opinion leaders, including four U.S. senators and two future U.S. presidents (Ford and Jimmy Carter, who was then governor of Georgia).
The Forum opened as scheduled on the morning of April 24, 1974, and everything went smoothly until lunchtime when Ford — our star speaker — failed to appear. Since we had anticipated that possibility, we had a backup speaker, environmentalist Lester Brown, so Les began making his presentation.
While Les Brown was talking, Ford finally arrived and rushed to the platform, but his assistant, who was carrying the Great Seal of the Vice President of the United States, was stopped at the door to the hall by a zealous guard. The Great Seal is placed on the lectern whenever a U.S. vice president speaks, but due to the mischance Ford was forced to speak over the “Great Seal” of the World Future Society.
Ford gave a friendly but brief talk without saying anything memorable and then rushed away to his next appointment, but I was elated: Only seven years after the Society’s founding, a soon-to-be president of the United States had favored the World Future Society with a speech — and we didn’t have to pay him a dime.
Zuckerman and I had hoped that the Society would benefit financially from the Energy Forum. Instead, we had dug ourselves into a deeper financial hole. When the bill arrived from the Washington Hilton Hotel, where we had held the Forum, we simply couldn’t pay it.
To make matters more terrifying, we planned to hold our general conference in the same hotel the following year, 1975. If we failed to pay the bill for the Energy Forum, the hotel would certainly not allow us to hold another conference, and no other hotel would touch us.
Zuckerman and I put off paying other bills until we had settled with the Hilton. Even so, we were shamefully slow in settling our hotel account, so the hotel would likely refuse to host our 1975 conference. Desperate, I appealed for help to Sheila Stampfli, a professional conference planner who had helped with our earlier meetings at the hotel. The Society’s credit was now worthless, but the hotel might trust Sheila.
Sheila and I went down to the Hilton and pleaded with the hotel’s sales manager. We argued that the Energy Forum was merely a one-of-a-kind experiment that hadn’t worked out, and we had made good in the end. We weren’t deadbeats. Our next meeting, we assured the sales manager, was a regular conference that could be expected to provide plenty of revenue. The manager, Gino Rosante, scolded me for half an hour, but, underneath, he seemed sympathetic. He finally yielded. He could trust in Sheila and her organization, but he clearly remained quite skeptical about me and the World Future Society.
I was a little skeptical myself, but I had little time to worry because we were already busy planning the program for the 1975 conference. Maybe that would be our salvation.
Next: Futurists gain influence in the U.S. Congress.