Predicting the future is not new in Gatshire. Saint Spurius did it, in his Visions, foretelling, among other things, so his adherents would have us believe, the invention of the phonograph, the discovery of penicillin and a nineteenth-century Derby winner, if that interpretation of one of his visions (translated into modern English) –

– is correct.

He did, however, make one glaring error: saying the world would end on the 3rd of July 1999. In his defence, it must be pointed out that in his day a book of clairvoyance that omitted the end of the world would not have been taken seriously; compared to other authors he was generous in giving the planet until the end of the millennium. Perhaps surprisingly, none of the participants in our project thought the world would end within the next century (though one or two did make jokes along such lines). By and large, they were optimistic, but for one or two exceptions, such as Mr Clark, who prophesied that a virulent pandemic would wipe out around two thirds to three quarters of the human race between 2025 and 2075. Here are excerpts from some of them:

YVONNE GRAY: Let’s start with what won’t be happening in a hundred years’ time. People won’t subsist entirely on vitamin and energy pills. Nor will they be living on the moon. Nor will everyone be flying around in private microlights. We will not be ruled by robots; nor will we ourselves be bionic. The world’s countries will not have united to form one giant superstate. We will not be living forever; perhaps some of the youngest of those here will still be alive, but the worms will have long since come and eaten up the great majority of us.