But the Writers of the Future Contest has asked me to read your palm nevertheless. Twenty-five years is no great length on the scale of history, and thus I am conservative, limiting myself to the following five predictions – one for each finger. And indeed, they are less prediction than certainty.

·The Thumb – Power: America and the U.S.S.R. preserve an uneasy accord, each testing the other's will within well-defined limits. No majornuclear war has taken place. Soviets are more like Americans (and Americans more like Soviets) than anyone else.

·The Index Finger – Learning: Vestiges of reading, writing, and spelling remain in the curricula of the public schools. Those who can read a few common words are counted literate. The schools train their students for employment – how to report to computers and follow instructions. (Called interaction.) Fifty million adult Americans are less than fluent in English.

·The Fool Finger – Entertainment: Sports and televised dramas are the only commonly available recreations. The dramas are performed by computer-generated images indistinguishable (on screen) from living people. Scenery is provided by the same method. Although science fiction and fantasy characterise the majority of these dramas, they are not so identified.

·The Ring Finger – Love: There is little sex outside marriage, which normally includes a legal contract. A single instance of infidelity is amply sufficient to terminate a marriage, with damages to the aggrieved party; this is a consequence of the two great plagues of the past twenty-five years. (I do not include the one we call AIDS, because it began well before this was written.) The population of the planet is below six billion. People live in space and on the moon, but their numbers are not significant.

·The Little Finger – Minority: A literate stratum supplies leadership in government and most (though not all) other fields. Its members are experimenting with sociological simulations that take into account the individual characters and preferences of most of the population.