theLogBook.com is a chronicle of how we used to imagine the future – an ever-expanding
logbook of what our entertainment, our culture, and even our brightest minds thought would happen.
It’s nostalgia – and some real history – that gives factual context to the fiction, cultural
context to the factual, and always looks to the future.

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Published On: August 24, 1998

Welcome To ParadoxThe second episode of the Sci-Fi Channel original series Welcome To Paradox airs, a loosely-connected anthology of science fiction stories set in Betaville, a utopian future city whose incredible technology has frequently unintended side-effects. Robert Wisden (Jeremiah, Smallville) stars in a story adapted from the works of SF authors James H. Schmitz and A.E. van Vogt.

This series is not yet chronicled in the LogBook. You could join theLogBook team and write this guide or support the webmaster’s efforts to expand the site.

Published On: August 24, 1977

Tales Of The UnexpectedNBC airs the eighth and final episode of Quinn Martin’s horror/sci-fi anthology Tales Of The Unexpected. (This series is not to be confused with the longer-lived British series of the same name, created by acclaimed author Roald Dahl.) Bill Bixby (The Magician, The Incredible Hulk) and Robert Pine (CHiPs) guest star. (The series has already been cancelled at this point; NBC is burning off the remaining episodes into off-season time slots.)

This series is not yet chronicled in the LogBook. You could join theLogBook team and write this guide or support the webmaster’s efforts to expand the site.

Published On: August 24, 1976

Salyut 542 days into their stay aboard the military space station Salyut 5, Soviet cosmonauts Boris Volynov and Vitaly Zholobov report unusual odors in the station’s air. On the 49th day of their stay, the two men bundle into their Soyuz 21 capsule to return home on only 10 hours’ notice, an unprecedented event. Details of the causes of the emergency return remain closely guarded to this day, including the possibility of toxic gas escaping into the station’s atmosphere and causing one or both cosmonauts to suffer rapidly deteriorating health. Neither of them fly in space again after their return.

Published On: August 24, 1966

Luna 11The Soviet Union launches unmanned space probe Luna 11 toward the moon, the first of a new, smaller generation of Luna probes designed to survey the moon from orbit. Unlike its predecessor, Luna 11 is equipped with cameras, and like NASA’s Lunar Orbiter, Luna 11 is tasked with mapping the moon in advance of a presumed attempt to land cosmonauts there. However, an attitude control problem points Luna 11’s cameras away from the moon, unable to transmit useful imagery back to Earth. Luna 11 remains functional in orbit of the moon for six weeks.

Published On: August 24, 1951

Tales Of TomorrowThe fourth episode of ABC’s science fiction anthology series, Tales Of Tomorrow, air on ABC, with each episode’s opening titles proclaiming that the series is produced “in cooperation with the Science-Fiction League of America”, a collective of sci-fi writers including Isaac Asimov and Theodore Sturgeon among its members. This episode no longer remains in the archives and may be lost.

This series is not yet chronicled in the LogBook. You could join theLogBook team and write this guide or support the webmaster’s efforts to expand the site.

Absolutely no generative AI was used in the creation of the content on this website.
It’s mostly just some guy named Earl.

EG