I stumbled across this video tune-hopping through YouTube and so enjoyed it. The musicians dressed neatly in suits and ties with Monday-morning haircuts, play seriously and without showmanship. Nineteen sixty-two, where are you? I want to pay a visit, maybe stay a while. Maybe never come back.
One of the commenters to the video wrote, " I prefer the future of the past rather than the one we're living now." I so totally get that. I recall a short story by Ray Bradbury, "The Fox and the Forest," published in Collier's magazine in May, 1950, about a couple who flee from the 22nd century to 1938 to escape the horrors of their own era. They are so happy to be free in a past that was -- is -- far better than their own time. But their happiness is short-lived for the government of the future needs their abilities and sends agents to arrest them and bring them back.
At the time it was published it was merely imaginative science fiction. The future couldn't possibly be terrible. Surely the future would be just an improved version of the present. Hah! I say. Hah! Hah!
Well, drift back in reverie to 1962 as this song (dedicated to a communications satellite!) envisions a future of progress and success.
"The Fox and the Forest" was included in the short-story collection The Illustrated Man. It's the 13th story down in the table of contents of this PDF file of the book:
