Books That Predict The Future

[witeowl]

This thread reminds me of the comic (an excerpt of Amusing Ourselves to Death, actually) comparing Orwell's predictions with Huxley's. Huxley comes out as the clear "winner". (I always knew there was a reason I liked Brave New World more than 1984.)

[EatingPie]

Originally Posted by elcreative

I sincerely hope that you're joking... Arthur C. Clarke wrote about them in a magazine (non-fiction) in the late 1940's and couldn't patent the idea at the time because it was an unimplementable...

I was about to post a reply correcting this, as I was taught in a college Science Fiction class that Clarke's lawyer convinced him not to patent it, and therefore he no longer trusts lawyers. Turns out, Clarke tells a different story.

Wait... the correction on the original post is that he did not invent geosynchronous orbits, he invented the idea of putting a minimum number of satellites in specific positions so they maintain a line-of-sight with each other, this giving full coverage of the earth... seen in Independence Day.

Okay, here's the quote:

I have often been asked—usually pityingly--why I made no attempt to patent the communications satellite. Perhaps the most truthful answer is that I never really expected to see it in my lifetime; I also (though in more cynical moments I am sceptical about this) seem to reccall thinking that it was an idea for all humanity, so I should publish to prevent anyone else from taking out a patent. As indeed I did…

I learned from my patent attorney that even if I had tried to patent communications satellites in 1945, the patent would have been rejected because the required technology did not yet exist, and the patent wouldn’t have been worth getting because its life would only have been 17 years. The patent would have expired the year before Early Bird was launched.

Wikipedia (ugh) says that he didn't patent becuase he claimed "a patent is a license to be sued." This came from a very late-in-life interview. I suspect Clarke's recollections have changed multiple times over the years.

-Pie

[elcreative]

Originally Posted by EatingPie

Okay, here's the quote:


Wikipedia (ugh) says that he didn't patent becuase he claimed "a patent is a license to be sued." This came from a very late-in-life interview. I suspect Clarke's recollections have changed multiple times over the years.

-Pie

Your suspicion is quite correct, I had one variant from him when chatting at Brighton WorldCon, heard another in a TV program and have seen several from various print sources...

[hidari]

Originally Posted by Nancy Fulda

Consider all of the things science fiction authors have predicted that haven't come about. Where's my humanoid robotic maid? My flying car? My voice-activated virtual assistant who sorts my mail and places my order for morning coffee?

I think it's easy to look backwards and point towards the few books that got it right. It's a lot harder to look at near-future predictions being published now and guess which ones are going to pan out.

Flying cars.... I think people underestimate the power of gravity...

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

In my books, I've predicted...

Oh, wait, that hasn't happened yet.

But in another book, I predicted--

Hold on. It's 2011, right? Not yet either.

I did come up with...

No; that was Lester Dent.

Oh, I know! There was--

Wait. The real thing was even smaller.

Ah... I predicted the smartphone.

(Wait, what? Really?!? When?)

Sigh... yeah, it's tricky predicting the future, and I can't think of too many books that have done it accurately, if at all. But the real value of the concept depicted in SF is to highlight the aspects of our use of science and technology that are most important to us at the time; for instance, our depictions of living arrangements in the future, whether they are single family homes in the technology-tamed suburbs, huge Arcocities housing all of humanity apart from the ravaged countryside, or <gratuitousPlug>city-satellites in space</gratuitousPlug>.

Another useful barometer such books provide is whether we perceive of those developments to be good or bad things: Supercities, for instance, have been perceived at one time as a triumph of human engineering, and at others an attack on Nature. Space colonization has been called Manifest Destiny, and abandonment of Mother Earth.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by hidari

Flying cars.... I think people underestimate the power of gravity...

Gravity's the least of your worries. Flying cars, possible or not, will never be practical until they can fly themselves and take human operators out of the equation. (Note: The same is true of cars on the ground...)

[soondai]

In the Bachman Books, Stephen King had a high school shooting rampage (Rage), reality TV (Running Man), and a hijacked jumbo jet being crashed into a symbolic sky scraper (Running Man again).

[William F]

I'd put Phillip K Dick in there somewhere.
Also, I do believe Clive Cussler used the Moller flying car in one of his books which, if I remember correctly, do fly themselves for the most part. The last I heard it was the FAA being the major problem with this technology.

[nyrath]

There is a website called Technovelgy which is nothing but lists of various modern-day innovations, along with various ancient science fiction stories that predicted each one.

http://www.technovelgy.com/

[EatingPie]

Okay, how's this...

R.U.R. or Rossum's Universal Robots, by Karl Capek

It predicted just about every robot-vs.-human story ever written. They all follow the basic "fear of what we created" theme, popularized by the Terminator series and The Matrix series.

-Pie

[Harry_Y]

Atlas Shrugged

[DAHayden]

David Brin's EARTH has an impressive list, from the Wikipedia entry:

Brin claims at least 15 predictive hits in Earth including:
The World Wide Web (including it as being a major news-media outlet, complete with videos and discussion forums) and blogging. (Brin did not predict the URL, rather using a clumsier numeric form of address.)
E-mail spam and sophisticated personalized filtering software.
Reduction of expectation of privacy.
Time limits on secrets both personal, corporate, and governmental
Levees breaking on the Mississippi.
The dissolution and partitioning of the Soviet Union (though most contemporary scholars later claimed that they were fully aware of the Soviet Union's impending collapse by 1989).
Global warming associated sea level rise and severe storm seasons.
Subvocal input devices.
Artificially created black holes considered seriously.
Crisis habitat arks for endangered species, with a view to later restoration to the wild.
Eyeglass cameras.
The erosion of personal privacy.
Eyeglass overlays on real environments.
Personality profiling through brain imaging.
Art sculptures on a geologic scale.
Decline of delivered mail.
Lawyer software.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

Doh! Dunno why I was thinking Card, prbly cause it is spelled to close to Clark, but I though he did patent it... but it looks like he did not even try:

[src: http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/s...arke-19172008]

Also, you can't patent an idea.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by DAHayden

David Brin's EARTH has an impressive list, from the Wikipedia entry:

Brin claims at least 15 predictive hits in Earth including:

These seem pretty weak predictions:

The World Wide Web (including it as being a major news-media outlet, complete with videos and discussion forums) and blogging.

Well, the www wasn't technically there - but e-mail and bulletin boards and chatrooms had been around for a while.

E-mail spam and sophisticated personalized filtering software.

Okay - although not really a major insight, IMO.

Reduction of expectation of privacy.

Actually, this was a big theme throughout the 70's, especially in Europe. He gets no credit. :-)

Time limits on secrets both personal, corporate, and governmental

This has been around at least since WWII. No credit.

Levees breaking on the Mississippi.

Levees have broken on the Miss. as long as there have been levees on the Mississipi. No credit

The dissolution and partitioning of the Soviet Union (though most contemporary scholars later claimed that they were fully aware of the Soviet Union's impending collapse by 1989).

Many people predicted this. No credit.

Global warming associated sea level rise and severe storm seasons.

The UN's Intergovernmental panel on climate change (IGCC) was created in 1988. -1.

Subvocal input devices.

Not until we actually use them

Artificially created black holes considered seriously.

No

Crisis habitat arks for endangered species, with a view to later restoration to the wild.

No - what was that early 70's sf movie that had something like this?

Eyeglass cameras.

Not until we have them.

The erosion of personal privacy.

Already mentioned, not original. -1.

Eyeglass overlays on real environments.

Wasn't something like this in Terminator?

Personality profiling through brain imaging.

We don't have this today.

Art sculptures on a geologic scale.

Mount Rushmore? We otherwise don't have anything like this.

Decline of delivered mail.

Until 1950, the US delivered mail twice a day.

Lawyer software.

You could buy will-making software from nolo in 1988. Modern "lawyer" software is no more sophisticated.

I'm not really impressed with these "predictions".

[queentess]

How about E.M. Forster's The Machine Stops?

Also, The Physics of Star Trek (written my one of my professors), that looks at some of the stuff that Star Trek may have predicted and the stuff the writers were waaaay wrong about. It's a fun read.