Yet minds still yearned for other times as always.

This was a time of high adventure, rich living and hard dying... but nobody thought so.
This was a future of fortune, culture and vice... but nobody admitted it.
This was an age of extremes, a fascinating century of freaks... but nobody loved it.
Three planets and eight satellites and eleven billion people swarmed in one of the most exciting ages ever known. Yet minds still yearned for other times as always.

This is the first paragraph of the novel The Stars my Destination by Alfred Bester. The image above is from the graphic novel based on the book.

I was very excited when I read that first page. Then it immediately goes on about some kind of psychic teleportation and just I lost interest, I'm slightly ashamed to say.

But I love that first bit because it was written in the past about a time far into the future, yet is relevant right now. It's also interesting how much he under-estimated future population growth. 11 billion as early as 2050 is at the upper end of predictions (it'll probably be about 9 billion and will hopefully stabilise at that point).

As Louis C K said: Everything's Amazing and Nobody's Happy.