Originally published at: Usborne Book of the Future re-issued in UK | Boing Boing
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Still no Olympics on the Moon, either. The funky digital watch is kind of like a cellphone, though, right?
I absolutely loved those books as a kid, I knew them as the separate editions, not the Omnibus.
(There is a PDF of the book available, but physical books are still cooler.)
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I totally remember having read this. I never had a copy but these pictures evoke some deep memories.
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“Polluted city of a dying world”. Yeah, that about sums it up, doesn’t it?
Definitely getting this book. Retrofuturism and kids’ books with super detailed illustrations (like David Macaulay’s stuff) are two of my favorite things.
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Still got some of mine:
I still think they’re great. Explaining complex things in a simplified, but not dumbed-down way.
Sparking curiosity and inspiring to think about the future.
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I remember the Usborne book about ghosts. It was similar in style to this but was weird in that it made studying ghosts sound like an actual scientific field. Like it said the reason why ghosts can “walk through walls” is that they are acting according to the floorplan of the building they lived in which might be different from the current one. When I was a kid I thought that seemed reasonable until I thought about it a bit.
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Oh yes, one of my favourites as well.
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I made so many of those things out of Lego.
Good times.
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I distinctly remember that one too! There was also one about the ghost of a lady in a red dress who became paler and paler over the centuries, as if she was suffering from UV exposure or something.
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Usborne had an amazing set of educational books for kids about computers and programming in the 1980s. These can now be downloaded for free from them:
I adore Usborne books! Their art style and the way they spoke to kids was really something special.
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Another idea for a project would be a raspberry pi-type computer (or maybe just a website) that presents an “Usborne” BASIC interpreter so all the old programs from those books can by typed in without having to figure out which exact 1980-ish British home computer the programs will work on without hacking at them.
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There’s a version of RISC OS for the pi that can boot up into a full descendent of BBC BASIC. This may be compatible with the Usborne dialect as-is; if not, modifying the BASIC interpreter would be an interesting challenge.
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Haha, I love this idea. It would be pretty easy to auto detect the flavour of BASIC being used and fire up the appropriate emulator.
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Wait… I’m confused… Are we all speaking German in the future? 
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Well, certainly English with a pronounced Düsseldorf accent. D. Ü.S.S.E.L.D.O.R.F; pronounced “Düsseldorf”.
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I just bought a copy. £10.99 for a hardback copy!? Score!!
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Ghosts, UFOs and Mysterious Creatures. Three books =)
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This was one of my favorite books as a kid and it was lost along the way. It popped into my head last year and I went looking for one on eBay. I couldn’t believe what I saw. $200-$350!!
I wonder if the reissue will affect these prices.
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Were his books the ones that featured wooly mammoths in repeated appearances? I’m certain there’s at least one of his around here.
ETA: somewhat timely image
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Not that I’m aware of. He tends to focus more on engineering. The two books that I have show how people built the Pyramids and a medieval cathedral, step by step.
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