Return to the 20th CenturyJanuary 1, 1960, and the whole globe was atremble with anticipation. For today marked the start of ceremonies surrounding the official inauguration of the new man-made continent dubbed Helenia.
A truly unique milestone in human progress had been reached. The cunning assembly of millions of hectares of artificial land from great carven sheets of the Himalayas and Rocky Mountains, covered with rich topsoil dredged from the many productive ports and harbours of the whole world, and utilizing the scattered Polynesian isles as seeds around which to accrete, represented the supreme accomplishment of human craft and ingenuity to date. Although the startling and productive twentieth century still had four decades to run, it certainly seemed to most of the citizenry that
