Five stamp designs, printed in booklet form, are reminiscent of the 1930s vision of space travel made popular in movie and comic-book adventures. The designs comprise a single panoramic view. Science fiction writers, such as Jules Verne and Edward Bellamy, popularized futuristic thinking. H.G. Wells was a 20th-century futurist who was able to meld an excellent understanding of science with imagination and profound social concerns. Futurology is the study of long-term trends in society in order to develop and promote alternative ways of dealing with future events or conditions. Although some of the terms used in the field date only from the 1940s in Europe and the United States, societies throughout history have used a variety of methods for predicting the future. World War II was a turning point for futures research. USAF Gen. Henry Harley Arnold began the first technological forecasting project in 1944 and two years later was instrumental in establishing the RAND Corporation as a think tank.