“Where is my flying car?”: 5 Major Promises by Sci-Fi Writers That Never Came True

Recently, I published an article titled “They Warned Us: 7 Predictions from 20th-Century Sci-Fi Writers That Came True with Eerie Accuracy,” and in the comments, I was asked to write a follow-up piece for the sake of objectivity, exploring the predictions that didn’t come true. Well, even though we live in a cyberpunk era—we have a global network, neural networks, and corporations ruling the world—if we are completely honest, our “future” looks rather boring compared to what we were promised in 20th-century books and movies.

Some predictions did come true; however, many sci-fi writers often overestimated the speed of physical progress and underestimated the complexities of biology and sociology. Here is a chronicle of the greatest disappointments—technologies that were supposed to become commonplace by 2026 but remained confined to the pages of books.

1. Flying Cars and Personal Air Transport

The Promise: Blade Runner (set in 2019), Back to the Future Part II (set in 2015), The Fifth Element.

Perhaps humanity’s biggest grievance. By the 2000s, traffic jams were supposed to disappear, relocating to the skies. Every self-respecting citizen was supposed to park their hovercar on their 50th-floor balcony.

Why it didn’t come true: The laws of physics and common sense. Lifting a ton of metal into the air requires colossal energy (much more than rolling it on asphalt). Furthermore, imagine a drunk driver or a minor fender-bender in the air: debris falling on pedestrians’ heads and house roofs. Air traffic control for billions of flying cars is a logistical nightmare that we cannot (and are afraid to) solve right now. Instead of flying DeLoreans, we got electric scooters.

2. Lunar Bases and Orbital Hotels

The Promise: Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

In Kubrick’s film and Clarke’s book, by the year 2001, fully-fledged bases already exist on the Moon, and flights there are operated by comfortable Pan Am space-liners. People of the future were supposed to fly to space as casually as we fly to a beach resort.

Why it didn’t come true: The Cold War ended. The space race was a political project, not an economic one. As soon as the US beat the USSR, NASA’s funding was drastically cut. Space turned out to be monstrously expensive and dangerous. We got stuck in low Earth orbit (the ISS), and human feet haven’t stepped on another celestial body since 1972. Although there is hope. Elon Musk decided not to dust off the Red Planet but to turn his gaze to the Moon. He announced this in early February .

3. Food in Pills

The Promise: Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, and almost all sci-fi from the 60s.

In the future, people weren’t supposed to waste time cooking and chewing. A three-course meal was supposed to fit into one small pill containing all the necessary calories and vitamins. Fast, efficient, futuristic.

Why it didn’t come true: Sci-fi writers forgot that people love to eat. Food isn’t just fuel; it’s a pleasure, a social ritual, and a culture. Moreover, the laws of physics are against us once again: it’s impossible to compress 2,000 calories into a 5-gram pill unless it’s pure uranium. Instead of pills, we got a food cult: food bloggers, endless cooking shows, and 30-minute sushi delivery.

4. Robot Butlers (Androids)

The Promise: Isaac Asimov, I, Robot, the animated series The Jetsons.

Every home was supposed to have its own C-3PO or Rosie—a humanoid robot that washes dishes, walks the dog, babysits the children, and keeps up small talk.

Why it didn’t come true: Moravec’s paradox. It turned out that teaching a computer to play chess or write poetry is easy. But teaching it to neatly fold towels, not trip over the rug, and put a duvet into a cover is incredibly difficult. Our robots today aren’t shiny androids, but flat vacuum “pucks” that buzz and get stuck under the sofa.

5. The 3-Hour Workday and the Era of Leisure

The Promise: John Maynard Keynes (economist), utopian sci-fi writers.

It was assumed that thanks to automation and robots, labor productivity would grow so much by the 21st century that a person would only have to work 15 hours a week. The main problem of the future was said to be “deadly boredom” and not knowing what to do with free time.

Why it didn’t come true: Productivity did indeed grow exponentially, but we didn’t start working less. On the contrary, thanks to smartphones and messengers, we are now online 24/7. Work has crept into our beds, our vacations, and our weekends. Needs grew along with opportunities, and the “culture of success” forced us to run even faster just to stay in place. Perhaps neural networks will change this unfortunate injustice in the foreseeable future.

Where did the future turn?

20th-century sci-fi writers imagined a “kinetic” future: everything was supposed to fly, explode, and move faster and further. But our future turned out to be “digital.”

We didn’t fly to the stars in a physical sense, but we created virtual universes that fit in our pockets. Instead of teleporting bodies, we invented the teleportation of information. It might not be as spectacular as a flying car, but admit it, a video call to the other side of the world is also magic—we’ve just gotten used to it.