BOOKS, FILMS PAINT VIEW OF 21ST CENTURY

What's your vision of the 21st century ... and beyond?

Do you think of the Jetsons, with people running around in pastel tights and turtlenecks? Or "Lost in Space," with the helpful robot waving his arms and saving the stranded explorers? ("Danger, danger, Will Robinson!")

Maybe Star Trek shapes your view: A federation of many planets and species working together in peace.

Except for those pesky Romulans and the occasional Borg intruder.

Beam us up, Scotty. Now.

Or maybe your vision is darker, more along the lines of Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" or the film "Blade Runner."

George Orwell's vision of Big Brother in "1984" hadn't come true once that year actually rolled around.

But will Orwell's dire predictions come true in 2084?

Or will we be flitting around in little spaceships and asking our friendly family robots to take care of the laundry and, while they're at it, bring us a drink?

Television, films and literature have presented varied visions of life in the 21st century, but how much have those visions affected what we expect of the future?

And will our expectations shape what actually occurs?

"The vision that they put in movies has been influenced by what we think and influences what we do," said Dr. Peter Hirschburg, chairman of the sociology and anthropology department at Southeast Missouri State University.

Sometimes it's hard to draw the line between fiction, fact and fantasy.

Hirschburg points to "those old space travel movies from the '50s."

"The Apollo astronauts' outfits as it turned out looked very much like the suits from those movies," he said. "Were they influenced so that they designed the suits to look like the film? I would suspect the films had an influence whether it was conscious or not."

What does Hirschburg think the 21st century will look like?

"It will look pretty much like it looks now," he said, pointing out that our lives haven't changed that radically in the last century or so.

"With the exception of certain technologies, life doesn't appear a whole lot different than it did 40 or 50 years ago," he said.

The 1936 film "Things to Come," predicted a world war in 1940, and by the 1970s, widespread space travel.

"The future doesn't look anything like they envisioned," Hirschburg said. No space flitters. No transporters. No spandex suits.

On the other hand, he points out, Jules Verne's visions eventually did come true in many cases.

Dr. Peter Bergerson, a political science professor at Southeast, said the film "2001: A Space Odyssey" has given people a certain idea of what life will look like in the now not-too-distant future.

The film "established a framework, established perhaps a visual mindset of what life would be like in space," he said.

But, Bergerson said, if films and literature can mold our visions of the future, they can also be used "as a way of interpreting the past."

He points to Oliver Stone's film "Nixon," a controversial portrayal of the embattled former president.

Writers and filmmakers share "the impact of molding and shaping everyone's dreams, whether they're dealing with the present, the past or the future. Films are sort of celluloid stereotypes. They create and develop images and expectations that become part of the vision that defines expectation," Bergerson said.