ESA Scans SF Books For Ideas

cyberm writes: "The European Space Agency has started a project to scan science fiction books for new ideas and technologies. " I like this idea - and not just because I have a massive science fiction book collection. If you look at the past, science fiction authors have routinely come up with the inventions of tomorrow - Jules Verne is a great example of classical science fiction that did so, but today's hard science fiction authors, like Kim Stanley Robinson, or David Brin are building tomorrow, IMHO.

Comments

I'm truly amazed...

[zorgon]

...that the ESA has the cash to spend on this sort of effort. Makes me mad when NASA keeps taking it in the shorts from Congress all the way down to Slashdot -- all that sniping does is give arms to those who want to slash NASA's budget, keeping out any possibility of funding for loony - but - fun - and - possibly - fruitful ideas like this one (as well as more immediately useful ones!).

On the other hand, the first thing they should do is find out the skill of SF writers' forecasts. You need to weight Clarke's or Robinson's or Brin's (well maybe not Brin's but definitely Clarke's) ideas higher than, well, I won't name names. You get the idea.