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Sci-Fi Writers of the Past Predict Life In 2012
cylonlover writes "As part of the L, Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future award in 1987, a group of science fiction luminaries put together a text 'time capsule' of their predictions about life in the far off year of 2012. Including such names as Orson Scott Card, Robert Silverberg, Jack Williamson, Algis Budrys and Frederik Pohl, it gives us an interesting glimpse into how those living in the age before smartphones, tablets, Wi-Fi and on-demand streaming episodes of Community thought the future might turn out."
In three years we will all have hoverboards!
They all missed that scientists would build a worldwide, high speed network for the reliable transmission of pornography to all corners of the planet, from Communist China, to the Soviet Union to the Arab world.
This is vaguely interesting, but imo, near-term predictions of technological development aren't really what you go to sci-fi for. If you really want an accurate prediction 15 years out, there are more qualified but generally less exciting people to get it from than sci-fi authors: that's near enough that you really just need people with a good amount of historical knowledge, extensive information about current developments, and perhaps especially, accurate knowledge of current research progress, prospects, and bottlenecks. And a decent ability to synthesize and evaluate all those variables.
Sci-fi's strengths are, instead, more about what-if than what-is-likely. One kind is technological what-ifs, imagining (at least in hard sci-fi) conceptually plausible but not anywhere near buildable technologies and their results and implications; and ethical/political/etc. what-ifs, analyzing how future societies might operate (often in either dystopian or utopian visions).
At least, that's what I go to sci-fi for.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
No serious science fiction writer in their right mind seriously thinks they can accurately predict the future. The good science fiction writers merely use the future to explore the issues of the present and their implications (and perhaps offer admonishment, with a glimpse of what could go wrong if a particular path is followed).
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Arthur C. Clark's 2001 A Space Odyssey predicted the iPad in 1968. He called it a "Newspad" and it connected to all major newspapers over the "ether". In the book, Heywood Floyd reads it on his way to the space station. In the movie, you can see Bowman and Poole watching the news on them during the first scenes on Discovery.
:wq
Even when they're get something right, they usually miss the real use or significance of it, or they characterize it in some bizarre way. A lot of people predicted, for example, that people would one day all have computers in their homes, but they almost all botched how they would actually be USED.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
I wonder if this is any more accurate than their predictions of the years 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, or 2010
The predictions for 2010 were highly exaggerated, but the ones for 2010 were spot on.
Come on, Battlefield Earth was pretty good (though the movie was a lot better than the book).
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
I'm thinking a 25 year old Scotch would be appropriate.
Might not hurt to have it delivered by a 25 year old blonde.
I predict more of the same. I also predict that people 25 years from now will still be making inaccurate predictions.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
One is an alternate universe 2010.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
you sure you don't life in the fifties? or sixties? or seventies? or eighties? or nineties? or 00's?
that's exactly the prediction all those guys got wrong pretty much.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
"Where do you see yourself in 5 years?"
My usual answer is "I used to have a great answer for this, and then five years went by."
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
L Ron Hubbard was a popular SF writer before he went nuts. (Or more (or less?) charitably speaking, before he figured he could accumulate wealth and power by inventing a religion.) A lot of writers go a bit weird in their old age (more specifically a lot of people go weird in their old age, but authors are in a pretty good position to publicize their own weirdness) but very few manage to go so far as to taint everything they've done before. Heinlein, James P Hogan, Terry Goodkind, Orson Scott Card, they all went a bit off the deep end later, but you can still admit to liking their earlier stuff and recommend that other people check it out without shame. (Well, except maybe for Orson Scott Card. I'll admit to liking his old stuff, but i'd be hesitant to suggest anyone actually support him by paying money for any of his books, even the older ones.)
For L Ron Hubbard though, Scientology has overshadowed everything else he ever did.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Sometimes we scare the crap out of ourselves.
The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Is that the one where Spock has a beard?
If you can't convince them, convict them.
In Heinlein's Future History series from the 1950s, there is a time line chart. This chart shows a "false dawn" in space travel - initial success around 1970, then a long hiatus.
In Heinlein's "The Man who Sold The Moon", the problem is made clear - fuel. A chemically powered rocket can just barely make it to the moon, with severe weight restrictions. Nuclear rockets are too dangerous. And so, the first lunar landing is a publicity stunt.
Heinlein could do the math. Space travel with chemical rockets is just barely feasible and hugely expensive. Nuclear rocket engines were built and successfully tested in the 1950s, but are too dangerous to use. Fusion isn't even close to working. So we're stuck.