Dips into the Future
SPECTATOR COMPETITION No. 258 Report by R. Kennard Davis Even more Interesting than the present series of extracts from the Spectator of 125 years ago would be extracts from 125 years hence. The usual prize was offered for a passage of not more than 150 words from the Spectator for January, 2080.
PROPHETIC vision appears to be a rare gift, and many competitors were content to follow in the wake of Wells, Huxley and Orwell. G. R. Smith attempted shame- lessly to cdtrupt the judge by representing him as endowed with remarkable longevity (through the agency of 'Vitabon') and amassing a staggering amount of prize money! J. P. Comyn gave the price of a 10s. brewery share• as £879 15s. 6d., a pleasing touch, while according to P. R. Roberts twenty cigarettes are to cost over £4 15s, Coal mining is to end, television will have been suppressed, the South Pole will be a holiday resort, and we shall grow blue lunar mosses in our gardens.
I award one pound to each of the follow- ing (four of the five are printed): Margaret Bishop, John Digby, L. Harris, A. D. Bennett Jones and Kosmo, whose parody suggests that the Spectator will not have entirely lost its pleasing idiosyncrasies in 125 years!
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