TAKING STOCK IN A YEAR OF SOBER LOOKS BACK, AND DAZZLING VIEWS OF THE FUTURE

Year's end is a time of tradition and transition. So folks play the spiritual parlor game called Taking Stock, in which the players consider what the world's shapers have given them. In these pages is one view of life at the end of 1993: science looks ahead; art looks back. Each discipline could help the other. Those stratospheric Maytag repairmen from the Endeavour might be hired to wire the TV set of the future for 500 channels, and then maybe the gene wizards could splice some decent programming into it. Biosphere II might be a good place to lock away all those fun couples -- Burt and Loni, John and Lorena, Ted and Whoopi -- until they sort things out. But this is science fiction, mere dreamery. Art doesn't solve problems any more than (pace Janet Reno) it creates them. What art does, or did this year, is review those thorny issues in the past tense. So much of 1993's art amounted to a gigantic act of pained remembrance. Experience the Holocaust, in a museum or a movie. Look clearly at Jack Kennedy, or recycle Teddy into pulp. Watch the Great Depression in four weekly installments. Today those who forget the past are condemned to relive it -- on the big screen or small. It is also salutary to recall 1993's failings: Mitch Williams in the World Series, Chevy Chase on late-night TV, Michael Jackson in the court of public $ opinion. Everyone, after all, builds a future on a resolve not to repeat old blunders. May we all profit from examining our yesterdays, todays and tomorrows. They are the only days we have.