Our annual crystal ball issue [Spectral Lines]

In the 1944 movie "It Happened Tomorrow," a newspaperman, played by Dick Powell, gets a magical edition of the next day\´s newspaper. He scoops the competition, amazes his editor, saves a damsel in distress, and becomes a hero, only to get an early look at the ultimate story: the report of his own death. It\´s the classic nightmare of seeing the future without being able to change it, and it goes all the way back to the Arabian merchant\´s appointment in Samarra and to Oedipus\´s fateful flight to the city of Thebes. But for an engineer, the horror is to see the future without understanding it.