At the docks you step into a shiny metal submarine that is shaped like a shark. The door is closed behind you, and powerful engine purrs to life. Down slides the submarine — like a shark diving. Deeper and deeper under the water.

Soon all sunlight is gone. The headlights of the diving ship are turned on. Then, six miles below, you come to the sea bottom. From the diving submarine, you change to tiny jet boat and ride along close to the bottom of the ocean, almost as you would skim over the land in an airplane. As you travel, you have fun looking out the window at the sights on the bottom of the ocean. You see strange fish and underwater mountains, cliffs, and valleys. But more than that—hotels and mining camps and farms and factories!

Scientists think that wonderful things may come true in the future. Future means a time that is not yet here. It can be a short time from now or a long time from now. Some of the underwater wonders are almost ready to come true now. Others won't come true, we think, until a long time from now.

Some, of course, may never come true — but who knows for sure? They may. What are some of the wonders that may come true in the future?

Let's go back to dry land and take a future journey the other way—up instead of down.

Huge rocket liners take you into space to visit the Moon Camp. You walk around on the moon in a special moon suit. You visit an observatory where a giant telescope looks far into space—farther than anyone has ever been able to see from Earth. You go deep down into one of the moon mines.

After you have visited the moon, you visit the Mars Colony and the Venus Exploration Outpost.

Let's go back to Earth.

In the far, far future, girls—and boys, too—may be playing with dolls that look like the people of the planets visited by our spacemen.

To control or run all kinds of toys, boys and girls may learn to use special computers—machines that answer questions and do arithmetic faster than you can blink.

Bicycles and perhaps skates may be run by jet power, and a new thing to ride may be a small flying saucer. Imagine a race between them!

There may be telepathy helmets that send thought waves from your brain to that of your friend miles away. You just think a thought and your friend knows it! You can have secrets with each other that nobody else can turn in on!

There will be other surprises in the future. How would you like to have a robot playmate?

Having robot playmates may not be so much fun as it seems. But maybe a boy with a wrench and a screwdriver can fix the robot so that it won't be too perfect!

What about the food of the future? Scientists think that much of it will be artificial—made in factories from such surprising things as coal, limestone, air, and water.

You don't think that ice-cream or cake or candy or even bread and potatoes made out of these things will taste very good? You may be wrong. These artificial things will be blended so skillfully by food chemists that the food of the future probably will be delicious. It probably will also be healthful because all the things that you need to live a long and healthy life will be put into it.

Scientists of the future will almost certainly find other ways to make life last longer. They probably will find cures for most diseases. Hospitals will probably have "body banks" that can give you almost any new part you need to keep on living. People of the future may live to be a lot older than 100 years.

Are you wondering whether there'll be television in the future? There'll almost certainly be wonderful programs. Television screens probably will be large and flat, hanging on the wall or going across the four walls of a room. People on the screen will look as real as if they were right in the room with you.

What about highways of the future? Well, a very small child probably will be able to drive a car. Nobody will need to steer. Electric signals will hold each car on the right road to get wherever the "driver" wants to go. And it probably will be impossible for cars to smash together. Controls that won't even have to be touched will make all speeding cars miss each other or will put on the brakes. Driving by car will be as safe as being at home.

But maybe the most wonderful surprise in the future will be weather control. Cities may have giant plastic domes over them to keep out snow, rain, or storms.

When you plan a picnic in a park, you won't have to worry about rain. It will rain only when the "weatherman" thinks it is needed to freshen the air inside the city. All other days will be fair and warm.

The future should be a wonderful time in which to live. But the time you are living in now was also "a wonderful future" to the people who lived 100 years ago.