Where did my flying car go?

Do you remember the 1950s? Yeah, me neither. But, according to all the movies and TV that I've watch, the 1950s were fairly awesome. You would go to school in your poodle skirt (if you were a girl...or a really eccentric guy, I guess), your "steady" would carry your books for you (once again, if you were a girl...guys had to do the heavy book carrying back in the day), when you got home Mom would have you a nice batch of warm cookies and cold glass of milk, and when you thought about the future you imagined flying cars and vacations to the moon.

So, here we are, in the future. Poodle skirts have been replaced with $100 pre-ripped jeans, you can't even get a guy to carry your iPod, cookies are considered high fat and probably cause cancer, milk could contain steroids and may be cruel to cows, and when we dream of the future we only see pain, death, and destruction.

Okay, okay. You're right. I would hate poodle skirts and quite possibly would punch someone that even suggested that I couldn't carry my own darn books. And, although it might not be the best thing for my diet, I still eat warm cookies with a tall glass of cold milk (even though I have to actually make it for myself). But I am feeling cheated out of having high hopes for the future.

I have recently read two excellent books, The Hunger Games (read it; read it now) and Unwind. Both are set in a future where things, quite frankly, suck. In The Hunger Games teenagers are forced to fight to the death on live television while teens in Unwind face the possibly of being taken apart, piece by piece, while they're still alive.

Ummm...ew.

I'm tired of science fiction telling me that our future is going to be a place where the world is covered in grime, happiness is a dream, and the moon has been knocked too close to the Earth. I want sunshine and rainbows and flying cars. Can someone please find me a book like that? (And if you happen to come across an actual flying car, I'd love one of those too.)