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Creator
Esfandiary, F. M.
Call number
MssCol 4846
Physical description
24.5 linear feet (59 boxes)
Language
Some correspondence in Persian
Preferred Citation

F. M. Esfandiary / FM-2030 Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library.

Repository
Manuscripts and Archives Division
Access to materials
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Portions of this collection have been digitized and are available online.

The F. M. Esfandiary / FM-2030 papers document the professional career and personal life of the author, philosopher, designer, long-range planner, and lecturer. FM-2030 was born Fereidoun Esfandiary in Belgium in 1930. The dates of the papers span 1943-2000 and include personal and professional correspondence; notebooks; manuscripts; typescripts; book reviews; press releases; interviews; lecture and seminar notes; photographs; and sound recordings.

Biographical/historical information

Author, philosopher, designer, long-range planner, and lecturer, FM-2030 was born Fereidoun Esfandiary on October 15, 1930 in Brussels, Belgium. His father, A. H. Sadigh Esfandiary, served in the Iranian diplomatic service from 1920 to 1960 and witnessed the rule of two Shahs, Iran's occupation in World War II and the struggle that restored Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to the throne in 1953. As a diplomat's son, F. M. Esfandiary spent his youth traveling between European countries, Afghanistan, Iran, and India. He attended primary school in Iran and England and completed his secondary education at Colleges Des Freres, a Jesuit school in Jerusalem. He represented Iran in the 1948 Olympic Games in London before moving to America to attend the University of California at Berkeley. He transferred from Berkeley to the University of California at Los Angeles and graduated in 1952. From Los Angeles, he followed the career path of diplomacy and served on the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine from 1952-54. Esfandiary's nomadic youth and his experience at the U.N influenced his idea of a future dominated by blurred national boundaries and identities.

Between 1959 and 1966, he turned to writing and published three novels, which were translated into twelve languages: The Day of Sacrifice (1960), The Beggar (1965), and Identity Card (1966). In addition to these novels, he published review and opinion essays in the New York Times, the Nation, Saturday Review and the Village Voice. Esfandiary's novels dealt with the struggle for identity amongst political, religious and social turbulence of the modern age. He was critical of what he considered underlying social tyrannies of the Middle East, including authoritarian family life and remnants of feudal behavior patterns. Esfandiary's theme of the meaninglessness of national identity, ultimately led to an existentialist critique of bureaucracy in his final novel, Identity Card. During these years Esfandiary maintained residences in New York, Los Angeles, Paris and Tehran.

By the end of the 1960s, Esfandiary's work turned into philosophical speculation over changes in the world as it faced the millennium. Political contests of the Middle East were increasingly difficult for him to follow and he focused on the transnational protest movements of the 1960s. His cosmopolitan claims and belief that the psychological proximity of people transcended national borders fit in particularly well in the climate of political change. As he sought an intellectual basis for the unification of social movements around the globe, Esfandiary conceived of a future in which universal dialogue was to be capable of cutting through political, national and racial barriers, and prejudices and political difference would slowly melt away. Influenced as he was by existentialist philosophy and the social tumult of the era, Esfandiary moved beyond what he thought were normative forms of expression and began to approach the subject of the future life of humans to help others deal with the changes he believed marked the postindustrial age.

Esfandiary became an instructor within the continuing education program at the New School for Social Research in 1969 where he would teach courses in futuristics in cooperation with the World Future Society until 1977. In his lectures he aimed to illustrate specific accelerating factors that assisted society's outgrowth of insularity and provincialism. Optimism One, published in 1970, described a philosophical futurism characterized by strident hope and grand vision that culminated in the thesis that man had reached a new stage in evolution. He intentionally pitted his optimism against trends in social science that criticized the industrial age as an era of alienation. Up-Wingers and Telespheres completed Esfandiary's attempt to provide an overview of the social, economic, political and educational infrastructures of the postindustrial age. Technological development in areas such as genetics, alternative energy, computing, genetic engineering, health sciences, and communications provided Esfandiary with the intellectual means to announce the abundance of all necessary resources. His message of abundance of limitless raw materials was delivered in opinion editorials for the New York Times. By 1979, Esfandiary was determined to call attention to the fact that governments, churches or industrial complexes would be not be able to stop the forces of the new values in the postindustrial technology.

After 1981, Esfandiary acted as a consultant to private companies and government agencies. His seminar at the UCLA Extension School, 'Major Transformations: The Next 20 Years,' was held from 1979 to 1991. Esfandiary's theories of futuristics included themes originally developed in his novels, but became infused with ideas of salvation through high technology. Unpublished works from this period, including Countdown to Immortality, evince his categorical approach to the arrival of immortal man. He embraced the breakdown in traditional values of work, family, and government and articulated his theories in a pastiche of scientific facts. His predictions leaned on historical materialism, convinced that the conflict between United States and Soviet Union would result in space civilization. Other forecasting was more prescient, such as his idea that schools would be replaced by teleducation, shopping would take place in telemarkets and centralized cities would transform into museums. He changed his name to FM-2030 in 1988 to show personal commitment to his ideas. Though a source of some confusion, the name change was intended to remind readers, students and peers that his predictions would be commonplace by the year 2030. In 1989, he published Are You a Transhuman?, a self-diagnostic test for measuring one's transhumanism.

FM-2030's increasing emphasis on the physical transgression of death was informed as much by his imagination as his confidence in technology. As philosophers discussed the dehumanization in modern society, Esfandiary believed man's only limits were boundaries of his visions and ideals. Positive universal man was the next step beyond earth and the time-bound human. In the last two decades of his life, Esfandiary worked on several unpublished works, published opinion pieces in the Los Angeles Times and continued to give seminars at the Florida International University. In the year 2000, FM-2030 was placed in cryonic suspension at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Scope and arrangement

The F. M. Esfandiary / FM-2030 papers document the professional career and personal life of the author, lecturer and social visionary. The dates of the papers span 1943-2000. They include personal and professional correspondence; notebooks; manuscripts; typescripts; book reviews; press releases; interviews; lecture and seminar notes; photographs; and sound recordings. The F. M. Esfandiary / FM-2030 Papers are an important resource for the study of American literature, Iranian-American intellectual culture, the emergence of postmodernism, the postindustrial age and millennialism in the late 20th century. The papers include documentation of Esfandiary's literary career in which he published seven books over three decades. Esfandiary's personal correspondence captures the intellectual milieu of New York's bohemian Greenwich Village where lived during the 1950s and 1960s. Letters from friends and family in Iran are in Farsi. Esfandiary traveled often and by the 1970s was bi-coastal, living in both New York and Los Angeles. Letters to Esfandiary from his readers offer glimpses into the attitudes of New Age enthusiasts committed to his descriptions of the transformations of social and religious institutions. The papers include clippings about Esfandiary, including interviews in the international press, press releases, and reviews of his writings. These items provide a measure of the critical response to Esfandiary's work throughout his career. Esfandiary's literary archive includes published works and unpublished manuscripts as well as a considerable amount of research material. Manuscripts and corrected typescripts of published works include: The Beggar; Day of Sacrifice; Identity Card; and Are you a Transhuman? His unpublished manuscripts include "Countdown to Immortality" and "Guide to the Post-Industrial Age." The teaching files document Esfandiary's lecture courses in futurist philosophy at the New School for Social Research and the UCLA Extension School. Esfandiary's seminars on long-term planning were addressed to private corporations and governments agencies in California and Florida. Personal calendars span his entire career and offer insight into the extent of the enigmatic author's daily activities and social networks in New York and Los Angeles. The research files show Esfandiary's later working methods and serve as a vertical file of subjects related to the changing social dynamics resulting from scientific advancements in the last two decades of the 20th century in such areas as communication technology, genetics, and space travel.

The F. M. Esfandiary / FM-2030 papers are arranged in seven series:

  • I. Correspondence
    1943-1999, n.d.

    Esfandiary's correspondence is divided into two subseries: A. Personal Correspondence, B. Professional Correspondence

  • II. Writings
    1954-1998

    This series contains published and unpublished writings of F. M. Esfandiary from all phases of his long and varied career and are divided into three subseries: A. Editorials, B. Published Books, C. Shorter works and D. Unpublished works.

  • III. Teaching and seminar files
    1969-2000

    This series consists of course descriptions, lectures notes and feedback from students and professionals who participated in Esfandiary's courses, lectures, and professional seminars. The teaching files document Esfandiary's career as lecturer at the New School for Social Research and the UCLA Extension School in the 1970s and 1980s and his later seminars at the Florida International University in the 1990s. Esfandiary's career in education began in 1969 at the New School for Social Research. His course, 'Toward a New Concept of Man,' was first taught in the Sociology department and sought to develop a new visionary image of man free from the bogged down ideas of alienation, estrangement and identity crisis. This course was taught until Fall of 1975, but by that point was under the heading of futuristics. In addition to lecturing at educational institutions, Esfandiary maintained a busy schedule of professional seminars and workshops for industrial, government and professional groups. The files include correspondence and feedback from Esfandiary's consulting at California Department of Justice and Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Between 1981 and 1991, Esfandiary's seminars were held Lockheed Corporation, University of California Department of Plastic Surgery, American Institute of Architects, Group Psychotherapy Association of California, American Planning Association National University Extension Association, and California Society of Certified Public Accountants. These workshops focused on planning for the future and exegeses of the postindustrial economy. Ephemera from Esfandiary's press tours and speaking engagements from the 1970s is also included in the seminar files.

  • IV. Personal miscellany
    1943-1999

    The address books and calendars present a detailed record of Esfandiary's personal and professional career. The address books include personal contacts from his time in California, New York, Paris and Florida. There are business cards included for the years 1980-1999. The calendars are date books with comments on daily activities for each day of the year 1960 to 1997. Notebooks span the dates of Esfandiary's professional career. The notebooks from the 1950-1958 offer insight in the philosophical and psychological background of his thought. The personal documents include early identification from the 1948 Olympic Games at London and the United Nations, and immigration forms processed upon Esfandiary's naturalization as an American citizen.

  • V. Research files
    c. 1970-1999

    The research files are arranged alphabetically and reflect Esfandiary's intellectual activity during the last three decades of his life. The files support his unpublished manuscripts, "Abundance and Immortality: The Post Industrial World 2000-2040," "Countdown to Immortality," and "Guide to the Post-Industrial Age." The files also provide evidence of general research interests in communications, immortality and genetics and are a useful subject file of breakthroughs in science and technology from 1970-1999. Esfandiary's research methods included the insertion of clipping files from a wide range of periodicals into notebooks with added commentary and notes. Files relating to Esfandiary's lifesuit represent his ongoing development of experimental clothing that incorporated the scientific advances of the time.

  • VI. Photographs
    1947-1999

    Esfandiary's photographs are arranged chronologically and document his life from 1947-1999. The earliest photographs include black and white images of Esfandiary at Berkeley and UCLA. The photographs are mostly personal and are held in envelopes with Esfandiary's own notes.

  • VII. Sound recordings
    1978-1985, n.d.

    The sound recording include documentation of Esfandiary's seminars on the future and his public appearances in support of his book Are You A Transhuman?

Administrative information

Source of acquisition

Donated by Mohsen S. Esfandiary, Fereshtehl E. Jahabani, Farideh Sadjadi and Flora Schnall, October 2002.

Processing information

Processed by Thomas Lannon; machine readable finding aid created by FAKER.

Using the collection

Location

Manuscripts and Archives Division
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, New York, NY 10018-2788
Brooke Russell Astor Reading Room, Third Floor, Room 328

Conditions Governing Use

Copyright to writings by F.M. Esfandiary / FM-2030 remains with the donors.