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Has Sci-Fi Run Out of Steam?
Barence writes "Science fiction has long inspired real-world technology, but are the authors of sci-fi stories finally running out of steam? PC Pro has traced the history of sci-fi's influence on real-world technology, from Jules Verne to Snow Crash, but suggests that writers have run out of ideas when it comes to inspiring tomorrow's products. 'Since Snow Crash, no novel has had quite the same impact on the computing world, and you might argue that sci-fi and hi-tech are drifting further apart,' PC Pro claims. Author Charles Stross tells the magazine that he began writing a sci-fi novel in 2005 and 'made some predictions, thinking that in ten years they'd either be laughable or they'd have come true. The weird bit? Most of them came true already, by 2009.'"
They mentioned Vernor Vinge, but only referenced his earlier work. One of his later stories, Rainbow's End, predicts a ubiquitous Augmented Reality, which we're only starting to see gimmick implementations of now.
Yes. Robert Goddard, the father of rocketry, said he was inspired by Jules Verne and other early scientifiction stories.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The correct plural form of deus ex machina is deii ex machina, not deus ex machinas. OMG, they dont seem to teach anything in Latin classes these days.
They sure don't! The only Latin plurals that have -ii are the ones where there's already an -i- in the word, like radius => radii.
Deus, as it happens, is one of the very very few irregular nouns in Latin, and the plural can be either di or, less often, dei.
In answer to the sibling AC who asked if di ex machina wouldn't imply a whole bunch of gods hanging from a single crane: the answer is no. In Latin that kind of construction is distributive, i.e. the usual implication is that there's one machina for every deus.