# Did any past writers about the future predict drones? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 24, 2026, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-past-writers-about-the-future-predict-drones/1032527 "2026-08-24T16:39:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![mixdenny](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mixdenny/32/2962_2.png) [@mixdenny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mixdenny)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2026, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-past-writers-about-the-future-predict-drones/1032527/1 "2026-08-24T16:39:55Z")
From delivering packages, conducting research, providing entertainment to changing the face of warfare - drones are everywhere today.I don’t recall drones in any predictions, though. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2026, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-past-writers-about-the-future-predict-drones/1032527/2 "2026-08-24T16:45:14Z")
Of course they have, in science fiction at least. Drones have been predicted and shown in science fiction for decades. They are often referred to as “probes.” On the silver screen, _Star Trek_ had various [probes](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/144157/classes-of-probes-in-star-trek), and the beginning of _The Empire Strikes Back_ in the _Star Wars_ franchise had an autonomous probe looking for the rebels on the ice planet of Hoth. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2026, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-past-writers-about-the-future-predict-drones/1032527/3 "2026-08-24T16:48:06Z")
> [@mixdenny](#): > > From delivering packages, conducting research, providing entertainment to changing the face of warfare - drones are everywhere today.I don’t recall drones in any predictions, though. The _Shadowrun_ role playing game, a bastardized cyberpunk setting with Tolkien magic and elves, dwarves, and trolls, had a character role called a Rigger. The Rigger could interface with machines like automobiles but they could also control drones use for survelliance or combat. This would have been circa 1991. ---
**Author:** ![mixdenny](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mixdenny/32/2962_2.png) [@mixdenny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mixdenny)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2026, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-past-writers-about-the-future-predict-drones/1032527/4 "2026-08-24T16:53:50Z")
> [@robby](#): > > Drones have been predicted and shown in science fiction for decades. They are often referred to as “probes.” That’s true, and we have them also, we call them spacecraft. They are a natural for space exploration. But I think that is an entirely different machine from the present day use of drones. I guess the hunter/killer or whatever it was called in “Dune” was a small drone - a flying hypodermic needle. ---
**Author:** ![peccavi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peccavi/32/388_2.png) [@peccavi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/peccavi)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2026, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-past-writers-about-the-future-predict-drones/1032527/5 "2026-08-24T16:54:02Z")
The first radio-controlled aerial drones [date back to WWI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_unmanned_aerial_vehicles). There was a commercial radio-controlled drone company in the 30’s, Radioplane, started by a silent film actor, Reginald Denny. So if we are talking about writers predicting unmanned aerial platforms, we need to start looking in the 19th century. Conan-Doyle apparently wrote a story, “The Great Brown–Pericord Motor”, in 1891, with a heavier than air unmanned flying machine. That may be the earliest prediction of an unmanned aircraft (versus more fanciful descriptions). ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2026, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-past-writers-about-the-future-predict-drones/1032527/6 "2026-08-24T16:58:04Z")
> [@mixdenny](#): > > > [@robby](#): > > > > Drones have been predicted and shown in science fiction for decades. They are often referred to as “probes.” > > That’s true, and we have them also, we call them spacecraft. They are a natural for space exploration. But I think that is an entirely different machine from the present day use of drones. I guess the hunter/killer or whatever it was called in “Dune” was a small drone - a flying hypodermic needle. That’s a good example. I also mentioned the probe from _The Empire Strikes Back_, which functions like a drone on a planet, not in outer space. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2026, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-past-writers-about-the-future-predict-drones/1032527/7 "2026-08-24T18:07:26Z")
Sorta depends on whether the OP thinks the important part about a “drone” is that it’s autonomous, or that it’s a flying machine. I harp about this often, but the term “drone” is now so broad as to be very close to meaningless. It’s come to mean any unmanned vehicle of any size, shape, or capability. Whether remotely controlled in detail by humans or semi- or fully- autonomous. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2026, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-past-writers-about-the-future-predict-drones/1032527/8 "2026-08-24T19:07:49Z")
Pretty sure that back in the nineties I read a Bruce Sterling novel with militarized drone warfare. Maybe his novel _[Distraction](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/218566.Distraction)?_ I just remember some cyberpunk book with attacking drones and how terrifying it was. ---
**Author:** ![Common\_Tater](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/common_tater/32/13846_2.png) [@Common\_Tater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Common_Tater)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2026, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-past-writers-about-the-future-predict-drones/1032527/9 "2026-08-24T19:09:23Z")
I’m trying to remember who it was (I read a lot) I _think_ it might have been Vannevar Bush, who accurately predicted remotely piloted weapons would be a thing someday, in the late 1940s. It was eerily prescient. it’s not that much of a stretch, really. More a matter of technology meeting the vision. My dad was a bit of an RC airplane guy, and he mentioned back in the 1970s they would make for a very effective anti-personnel weapon against VIPs, something for security to think about, and difficult to defend against. I don’t think anyone ever tried it, though. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2026, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-past-writers-about-the-future-predict-drones/1032527/10 "2026-08-24T19:14:32Z")
As a kid in the 1970s, I read a bunch of the children’s book series, like the Hardy Boys and Danny Dunn. [One of the Danny Dunn books](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Dunn,_Invisible_Boy) featured “a dragonfly-like probe which could be piloted with a telepresence helmet and gauntlet gloves.” It was published in 1974. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2026, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-past-writers-about-the-future-predict-drones/1032527/11 "2026-08-24T19:15:42Z")
It’s hard to say because the line between “combat robot” and “drone” is fuzzy; there’s a lot more of the former in early sc-fi. I _think_ it was one of Walter Jon Williams’s novels that had a minor scene where a drone shows up for a police situation, and is referred to as “the future of armed response”. Late model [Bolos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolo_universe) (AI controlled super tanks) control drones and forces of remote controlled smaller tanks. The [Sten series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sten_Chronicles) used quite a few missiles _as_ drones. The [Sleeper Service](https://theculture.fandom.com/wiki/Sleeper_Service) in the Culture novel _Excession_ in 1996 deployed _“a fleet of approximately 112,000 semi-slaved Offensive Units”,_ which probably qualify as drones. (Amusingly, the things they _call_ “drones” would not be drones by our standards as they are independent sapients). The Night’s Dawn trilogy had “[combat wasps](https://nightsdawn.fandom.com/wiki/Combat_wasp)” deployed by warships. ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2026, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-past-writers-about-the-future-predict-drones/1032527/12 "2026-08-24T19:46:52Z")
Philip K. Dick’s “Second Variety” envisions a battlefield where autonomous drones make it impossible for conventional ground forces to advance or hold ground outside of reinforced drone-resistant fortifications. A stalemated war that the current quagmire in Ukraine reminds me of. > **[Second Variety](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Variety)** > > "Second Variety" is a science fiction novelette by American writer Philip K. Dick, first published in Space Science Fiction magazine, in May 1953, with illustrations by Alex Ebel. Set in a world where a war between the Soviet Union and the United Nations has reduced most of the world to a barren wasteland, the story concerns the discovery, by the few remaining soldiers left, that self-replicating robots originally built to assassinate Soviet agents have gained sentience and are now plotting agai... (Of course, that’s just setting the scene. The novelty of the story is that the drone factories are also autonomous, and utterly commited to their goal of creating drones that can defeat even the defenses of the fortifications so that the drones can get to the last holdouts, and also not being too fussed about eradicating humans on only the “enemy” side of the conflict. So the factory AIs settle on a strategy of deception and infiltration.) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2026, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-past-writers-about-the-future-predict-drones/1032527/13 "2026-08-24T21:13:07Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Sorta depends on whether the OP thinks the important part about a “drone” is that it’s autonomous, or that it’s a flying machine. Or that it’s small and cheap, or that it’s an easy way to deploy cameras, or… ---
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2026, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-past-writers-about-the-future-predict-drones/1032527/14 "2026-08-24T21:19:28Z")
I did in a book I finished writing in 2008 which only about 20 people have read. Only mine were lighter than air, because I have a soft spot for zeppelins. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2026, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-past-writers-about-the-future-predict-drones/1032527/15 "2026-08-24T21:23:36Z")
There was an episode of the Adventures of Superman back in the 50’s where the Man of Steel had to battle “remote controlled airplanes” carrying bombs, launched from unknown areas. The pilotless airplanes were small enough for him to grab, putting them firmly in “drone” category. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2026, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-past-writers-about-the-future-predict-drones/1032527/16 "2026-08-24T21:50:37Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Pretty sure that back in the nineties I read a Bruce Sterling novel with militarized drone warfare. Maybe his novel _[Distraction](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/218566.Distraction)?_ I just remember some cyberpunk book with attacking drones and how terrifying it was. There was “The Arsenal of Freedom” episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Our intrepid crew is subject to a sales demonstration of a weapons system consisting of what we’d call unmanned drones today. These drones, or other weapons, had wiped out the native population before the Enterprise arrived. ---
**Author:** ![Moriarty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moriarty/32/49_2.png) [@Moriarty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moriarty)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2026, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-past-writers-about-the-future-predict-drones/1032527/17 "2026-08-24T23:53:06Z")
As I recall, when Marty McFly goes to the Hilldale neighborhood in 2015, there is a drone walking a dog on a leash. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2026, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-past-writers-about-the-future-predict-drones/1032527/18 "2026-08-24T23:55:24Z")
Robert Sheckley - [Watchbird](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29579), from 1953 > Over the town, the watchbird soared in a long, lazy curve. Its aluminum hide glistened in the morning sun, and dots of light danced on its stiff wings. Silently it flew. > > Silently, but with all senses functioning. Built-in kinesthetics told the watchbird where it was, and held it in a long search curve. Its eyes and ears operated as one unit, searching, seeking. > > And then something happened! The watchbird’s electronically fast reflexes picked up the edge of a sensation. A correlation center tested it, matching it with electrical and chemical data in its memory files. A relay tripped. > > Down the watchbird spiraled, coming in on the increasingly strong sensation. It _smelled_ the outpouring of certain glands, _tasted_ a deviant brain wave. > > Fully alerted and armed, it spun and banked in the bright morning sunlight. > > Dinelli was so intent he didn’t see the watchbird coming. He had his gun poised, and his eyes pleaded with the big grocer. > > “Don’t come no closer.” > > “You lousy little punk,” the grocer said, and took another step forward. “Rob me? I’ll break every bone in your puny body.” > > The grocer, too stupid or too courageous to understand the threat of the gun, advanced on the little thief. > > “All right,” Dinelli said, in a thorough state of panic. “All right, sucker, take—” > > A bolt of electricity knocked him on his back. The gun went off, smashing a breakfast food display. > > “What in hell?” the grocer asked, staring at the stunned thief. And then he saw a flash of silver wings. “Well, I’m really damned. Those watchbirds work!” > > He stared until the wings disappeared in the sky. Then he telephoned the police. > > The watchbird returned to his search curve. His thinking center correlated the new facts he had learned about murder. Several of these he hadn’t known before. > > This new information was simultaneously flashed to all the other watchbirds and their information was flashed back to him. ---
**Author:** ![Roderick\_Femm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roderick_femm/32/14875_2.png) [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2026, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-past-writers-about-the-future-predict-drones/1032527/19 "2026-08-25T00:00:44Z")
> [@peccavi](#): > > There was a commercial radio-controlled drone company in the 30’s, Radioplane, started by a silent film actor, Reginald Denny. He was mostly interested in model planes until WWII, and around 1940 started working out how to fly target ships for target practice for British gunners. Radioplane was bought by Northrop in 1952. By the way, born in 1891, Denny certainly acted in silent films, but he had a much longer career in sound films, working right up until his death in 1967. In the 60s he was in more than one episode of Batman, and in the movie Cat Ballou. His typical role in the 30s and 40s was the slightly dense sidekick of Bulldog Drummond. ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2026, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-past-writers-about-the-future-predict-drones/1032527/20 "2026-08-25T00:05:51Z")
That’s what I love about the Dope. One poster comes up with a very obscure, but interesting figure and facts, and then another Doper immediately brings more interesting facts about that person. Bravo. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-any-past-writers-about-the-future-predict-drones/1032527.md?page=2)