There were four books in Usborne’s The World of the Future series: Future Cities, The Book of the Future: A Trip in Time to the Year 2000 and Beyond, Star Travel, and Robots. All of them were written by Kenneth Gatland and David Jefferis, and all of them were published in 1979. I have not been able to pinpoint the illustrators yet.
UPDATE (4/12/14): Author David Jefferis kindly shed some light on the series and its creators. The post has been revised accordingly.
I worked with the sadly late Ken Gatland to create these books, but the editorial direction, page visuals for illustration briefings, and the words were mine.
Ken and I worked on the ideas and flat plans together, and Ken approved all, tweaked where needed, and added chunks of text as necessary .
Reasonably enough, we put our bylines in alphabetical order.
The books are, as you can see, amazing, and somewhat prescient—with the exception of the Olympic Games on the Moon. The last page draws heavily on concepts explored by NASA in the 1970s: see T.A. Heppenheimer’s Colonies in Space (1977), for instance.
The very last panel is a nearly line by line lifting of a lunar colony design by artist Rick Guidice, who did other work for NASA, as well as the visionary Basic Programming cover art for the Atari 2600 cartridge, also from 1979.
(Book images via Will S and Robert Carter)
2 Warps to Neptune 
My best friend had all four of those books in ’79-’80. It was common practice on weekend sleepovers for us to spend all Saturday afternoon thumbing through those books and discussing how awesome these future cities/colonies, etc. were and which ones we’d prefer to live in.
Man, now that you’ve brought all those memories back, I’m just gonna have to fish for those books again. Those were the best books ever.
They’re fairly easy to find, and from what I’ve seen they’re not that expensive. I’m just so backlogged on stuff I need to scan…
Good heavens. Used copy on Amazon is a whopping $90. http://www.amazon.com/Future-Cities-Homes-Living-Century/dp/0860202399/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1394046391&sr=8-2&keywords=future+cities+kenneth+gatland
Bah. Amazon is terrible. Try eBay or Abe Books.
Cool! Ebay’s still pricey. But AbeBooks scored. I can get it for under $30.
Hi,
Just thought I’d a add a word.
I worked with the sadly late Ken Gatland to create these books, but the editorial direction, page visuals for illustration briefings, and the words were mine.
Ken and I worked on the ideas and flat plans together, and Ken approved all, tweaked where needed, and added chunks of text as necessary .
Reasonably enough, we put our bylines in alphabetical order.
World of the Future was among my first titles, and remains close to my heart – I’m now spending a lot of time in domestic solar energy, so my ‘2001 House of the Future’ pages are coming true at last!
There’s no link with the Atari box btw – this is the first time I’ve seen it.
Best wishes,
David Jefferis.
Hi David,
Thanks so much for leaving a comment and clearing the record. I will update the post shortly. I would love to interview you about the World of the Future books, your current projects, and futurism in general. You can see an example of one of my interviews (with Malcolm Whyte, founder of Troubador Press) here:
https://2warpstoneptune.wordpress.com/2013/11/25/the-story-of-troubador-press-an-interview-with-malcolm-whyte/
My email is 2warpstoneptune@gmail.com. Or, if you like, leave me your email here and I will contact you.
I have added a link in the original article to Rick Guidice’s Atari illustrations.
Thanks again!
Kelly (2 Warps to Neptune)
does anybody know if these books were also published in other languages, german for instance? many thx
I read them in Norwegian as a child.
Looks like this is on the Internet Archive now: https://archive.org/details/Usborne_Book_of_the_Future_1979_pointlessmuseum/
How excellent.
These were great when I was growing up, and I was “raised” on The Jetsons etc, so I was already thinking of a future that hadn’t happened, yet!
I remember reading this book in grade 5 in 1979, I read the book over and over! Can you buy this book anywhere now?