Self-Styled Soothsayer Says He’s Usually Right if One Just Waits Long Enough : Futurist Publisher’s Brave New World Will Be a Terrific Place

Balint Szent-Miklosy needs no crystal ball to judge the shape of things to come. He has seen the future, he says, and it works great.

The world of tomorrow, says Szent-Miklosy, is a place where lunar soil makes a “top-notch concrete,” where an artificial gill opens “the bounty of the sea to mankind,” where beer takes just 24 hours to ferment.

It is a happy place, with international coexistence and technological progress coming together for the common good. And Szent-Miklosy is absolutely certain that it’s all going to come true.

“Every age has to have its prophets, people who by whatever means judge where we’re heading,” says the 42-year-old Hungarian immigrant.

Szent-Miklosy insists he is one of those soothsayers.

10,000 Subscribers

The forum for his prophesy is his 10-year-old magazine, Futurific. For $30 a year--$60 for institutions--10,000 subscribers receive 10 issues and a steady stream of relentlessly upbeat forecasts.

Szent-Miklosy calls it “The Antidote to Future Shock.” He believes his 30-page magazine, with its low-budget printing and crude black-and-white graphics, will be competition for Time and Newsweek within 10 years.

“Instead of saying, ‘This is what we did last week,’ we’re talking about where we’re going from here,” Szent-Miklosy said. “It’s the thing that makes us different. We’re talking about the next few months, the next few weeks.”

Szent-Miklosy said his faithful readers knew in the mid-1970s that an oil glut was coming; they expected gold prices to drop when the price was $860 an ounce; they were reassured that the Soviet Union would not invade Poland, when the upheaval in that country seemed certain to lure Russian tanks.

A follower of Szent-Miklosy can only expect a brave new world.

‘Where Others See Problems’

“I see solutions where others see problems,” he said. “Bad things do happen, but everybody else handles that. I don’t have to compete with them.”

So when dozens die and hundreds are irradiated by the nuclear plant accident at Chernobyl, Szent-Miklosy acknowledges the tragedy but sees a silver lining to that radioactive cloud. The Soviets will now be more open about their nuclear program, he said, and will trade information with the West.

“The more this fear between the two parts of the world is eliminated, even sometimes by a tragic accident like this, the greater the long-term results and friendly dealings between the nations of the world.”

Szent-Miklosy is, of course, not alone in his desire to see the shape of things to come. The World Future Society, the largest of several groups of future buffs, has 23,000 members--down from 40,000 at its height in the 1970s.

But spokesman Blake Cornish said that membership slide is attributable to a lack of promotion for the society, not a lack of interest in tomorrow.

Focus Has Shifted

Roy C. Amara, president of the more scholarly Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, Calif., said the focus on the future has been shifted from individuals to institutions--companies and governmental organizations that want to have a handle on what’s going to happen.

As for romanticized visions of tomorrow, he said, “I think there’s much less of that kind of activity--the kind of ‘look towards 2050.”’

Szent-Miklosy has been reading the world’s tea leaves for about 25 years now. He left Budapest during the 1956 revolution and came to New York, where he later became a planner with state and business organizations.

The future was never far from his thoughts. He served two terms as president of the New York chapter of the World Future Society (“I’m the one who put the World Future Society on the New York map,” he said, proudly.)

When 1976 rolled around, this self-styled visionary was jobless. He had in hand a $95 unemployment check, and a choice--he could pay the rent, or pay a printer to produce 500 copies of his new magazine. “I decided that I was in need of doing what my destiny called for,” he said.

Futurific swiftly became a kind of miniconglomerate.

Bought Word Processor

Szent-Miklosy needed a word processor, so he bought one. When it wasn’t being used for the magazine, it was used for a typing and resume service. When he needed messengers, he started a messenger service.

The profits from these sidelines went to prophesy. Szent-Miklosy used the money to expand the magazine and to print more copies.

Szent-Miklosy does not write the articles, but is responsible for every prediction. “Every month, in a sense, I’m putting my neck on the chopping block. And let the ax fall,” he said, in lightly accented English.

Perhaps that is why numerous pictures of Szent-Miklosy have graced the pages of Futurific--S-M listening intently to an astronaut; S-M’s Magyar visage smiling for a portrait; S-M shaking hands with President Reagan.

Numerous pictures of S-M with famous people also line the walls of Futurific’s office--a small room, perhaps 10 by 12 feet, into which have been shoehorned three desks, the word processor and piles of books and papers.

Uses Available Information

Szent-Miklosy uses information that is generally available to make his forecasts. The significant facts in a newspaper, he said, are often not on Page 1 but on Page 37, not in the headline but in the last paragraph.

“I think people like myself can see a lot of developments, and we can store a massive amount of data in free flow in our brains, where (there are) all these intersections which will provide a new impetus, a new creation, a new invention, a new industry,” he said.

This rather grand prognosticating process is not always supported in the magazine. In fact, much of Futurific consists of lightweight analysis--the Soviets and the Americans are coming closer, a European currency is gaining strength--and squibs about gee-whiz gimcracks, like a flashlight breath analyzer.

Futurific offers no tips on the next blue-chip stock, or predictions of who will be the next President of the United States.

“It really doesn’t matter. The forces of the system are so much stronger than the individual President,” he said. “We are giving the big picture.”

Sonic Boom Silencer

Sometimes that picture is a bit skewed. Szent-Miklosy admits that not all of the predictions have come to pass: a new technology to silence sonic booms was one clinker; a speedy deployment of a “Star Wars” defense system, but under international auspices, was another.

To Szent-Miklosy, these are temporary setbacks. “I have a fault, I guess, of seeing things much too fast, much too early,” he said. “I just see it coming a little faster than it really will happen.”

Actually, for Szent-Miklosy there are only temporary setbacks.

Even in his personal life. Earlier this year, after a lifetime in which “women ran away from me,” he described himself in Futurific as “the overlooked bachelor.” Within weeks he met a young woman while performing in a Manhattan light opera company. They became engaged.

He said things are going to be just fine worldwide too. A “worldwide battle against death,” which includes breakthroughs that will soon allow scientists to regenerate hands and hearts with genetic information. Transit systems will soon use magnetic levitation. Economic markets are merging.”

“The brainpower of the 5 billion people we have on Earth works together to create our own destiny,” he said.

“All the brains in a sense are working together. The more opportunity that is given to them--and that’s the direction we’re heading, more and more the individual is allowed to exist and flourish--the more this is possible, the more this brainpower of 5 billion people works in unison.”