Looking backward has never thrilled the editors at Discover—except, perhaps, to imagine the lifestyle of Sahelanthropus tchadensis, thought to be the earliest-known hominid. Instead, we have always preferred to peer ahead. Our very first issue in October 1980 set the tone: full of prognostications about computer art (rendering fur, hair, and smoke will be challenging), mental illness (brain scans will help diagnose it), and computer chips in cars ("dashboards that flash maps" are "under study").
The first issue of Discover 25 years ago (top) and Discover now (bottom).
In this issue, we celebrate 25 years of covering science by investigating the near future in realms ranging from string theory to sex. We take advantage of our connections, hard won over the years, to interview the best and busiest researchers in their fields, including Stephen Hawking, Gordon Moore, J. Craig Venter, and Dean Kamen. We push ourselves to produce graphics that distill complex knowledge into useful information. And we try to sidestep the expected—does anyone need to hear more about the importance of whole grains?—to present genuinely surprising science, such as geneticists who say that each person's ideal diet is different and that they may soon be able to reveal precisely what you, and you alone, should eat. 
Of course, looking into the future is a fool's game, and we've been fooled before. The same premier-issue article that foresaw dashboard navigation systems also suggested cars might soon have "an electronic voice that cries out when the driver pushes beyond the speed limit." In 2005 implanting nagging voices in automobiles is easily done, but even back in 1980, we should have guessed that demand for such a hellish gadget would be soft. So we've tried to keep the vistas in this issue realistic by focusing tightly on the near term.
Creating this 25th anniversary issue has been challenging, to understate the effort involved, but also pure joy because we, too, are surprised and amazed by how much is still out there to . . . discover. We hope you feel the same way.
