For example, the atomic-age architecture and populuxe designs of the ’50s and ’60s were reclaimed as artifacts from a future that never was — all part of a retrofuturist aesthetic that a character from a 1981 William Gibson short story termed “raygun Gothic.” As our hopes for the future grew dimmer, we retreated into the fantasies of prognostalgia to avoid what our present had seemingly become: the darkest timeline.

Asimov also once wrote that the “future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly,” yet today we are less concerned with preparing for an impending future of climate change, overpopulation and ever-bloodier ethnic conflicts than with keeping score among the various cultural predictions from the past about our present moment. Automatic coffee makers? Ding! Moon colonies? Bzzzt! Robot cars? Sort of! Self-lacing sneakers? Still waiting, Nike! With the anniversary of Asimov’s World’s Fair essay, and the approach of the future of 2015 (with multiple movie cameos and viral videos this year alone, Christopher Lloyd is already having his own little Doc holiday), we are entering a golden age of prognostalgia.

Besides the cresting wave of “Back to the Future” memorabilia (futurobilia?), I have lately found myself strangely comforted by intimations from other predicted futures. In 2019, we may not be living in a world of vengeful, mistreated human replicants, but I can already see Ridley Scott smiling down on me from the glowing valley of advertisements in Times Square, or better yet from the three gleaming LCDs’ worth of deliciously pouring coffee at my local Dunkin’ Donuts or McDonald’s. Skynet may not have become self-aware in 1997, but in a few years, flying autonomous Amazon drones may deliver my “Terminator” complete-saga, deluxe holographic box set right to my door.

These thoughts have left me wondering if there might be a way that our prognostalgia can lead, if not to a better world, than at least to better versions of ourselves. The Yiddish proverb says, “Man plans, God laughs.” But after God laughs, what then does man do? Buy replica bottles of retrofuturistic Pepsi from an animated Michael Jackson kiosk?

In an alternate ending to “Terminator 2,” available on some special-edition DVDs, 30 years after the 1997 apocalypse she helped avoid, Sarah Connor asserts: “The dark future which never came still exists for me. And it always will, like the traces of a dream.” Maybe these totems from a future that never was can help us reconcile our current selves with the dream traces of what we once envisioned for our own futures.

Thirty years ago, I was a chubby Jewish kid with glasses and a considerable amount of musical talent. Even before I had ever heard the term EGOT, Marvin Hamlisch was my spirit animal. By the time I went to college, I had hopes of becoming the next Keith Jarrett. Twenty years ago, bachelor’s degree in jazz piano in hand, I entered the seminary at Hebrew Union College to become a cantor. Although my present-day life is far different from the one I imagined as a 10- or even 20-year-old, I’d like to think I embody at least some traces of those nonrealized futures in my very fulfilling life. The dot-matrix playbill that I made in 1984 with Print Shop sits on my desk as I write the music for this year’s Purim spiel. The poster from my jazz group’s debut (and as it turns out, only) performance at the old downtown Knitting Factory hangs in the hall, as I improvise the lilting chants for a Friday-night service, or riff with my bar and bat mitzvah students about the meaning of life.