And that’s the way it was ….. er, is …… er, will be

I’ve just finished chapter 3 of my fifth novel, d4, and am already engrossed in this story about the future. I am so caught up in it, in fact, that I’m beginning to neglect this blog, which is centered around a book that focuses on the past. Yet past and future are at their root the same topic, aren’t they?

In that spirit, tonight I am pretending that I live in the year 1013, and can peer a thousand years into the future. Tomorrow, on October 16, what will I see?

In 384 years, a woman named Jadwiga will be crowned King of Poland, although she is a woman. A woman can run a country?
In 793 years, a French queen named Marie Antoinette who is famous for her extravagance, will be guillotined. Sounds a bit drastic.
In 869 years, England will found its first residential college for women. It is going to take over eight hundred years for me to be able to live in a dorm?
In 916 years the first family planning clinic will open in the United States. Wait, one can plan their family?
In 964 years, China, now home to amazing fireworks displays, will detonate its first nuclear weapon. I’m guessing that these nukes aren’t just bigger and better firecrackers.
In 978 years, Wanda Rutkiewicz will be first Pole and the first European woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest. What is Mount Everest? And why are women climbing it? October 16 seems to be a very good day for Polish women.

How do you think I’m going to feel about the direction the human race is headed?