# Most prescient piece of science fiction **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** star-trek-paramount\ **Created:** [August 24, 2024, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128 "2024-08-24T02:20:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2024, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/81 "2024-08-27T20:40:30Z")
đŸ€Ș đŸ€Ș đŸ€Ș đŸ€š Nor can they drink alcohol. > **[Pregnancy and smoking](https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/pregnancy-and-smoking)** > > Smoking while pregnant exposes a woman and her unborn child to an increased risk of health problems. ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2024, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/82 "2024-08-27T21:03:21Z")
Socrates has a valid point methinks ---
**Author:** ![JoseB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/joseb/32/1530_2.png) [@JoseB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoseB)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2024, 7:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/83 "2024-08-28T07:01:55Z")
Which is why the novel explicitly said that alcohol is added to the “blood surrogate” that circulates through the system of the artificial womb where embryos are grown. ---
**Author:** ![Zyada](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zyada/32/3028_2.png) [@Zyada](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zyada)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2024, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/85 "2024-08-28T18:30:51Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Nor can they drink alcohol > [@Lumpy](#): > > That would have to be an effect of nicotine in particular, since _in vitro_ fetuses can’t smoke. Exactly. They would have to determine which chemical in tobacco caused the problems. Is it the nicotine? The tar? Something else? The mother having reduced oxygen because her lungs are damaged? ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2024, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/86 "2024-08-28T19:04:09Z")
While reading a novel from The Culture series, _Player of Games_, which came out in 1988, I came across a passage that predicts key aspects of the QAnon conspiracy theory. The main character is a human (or post-human) from The Culture, a super advanced civilization with AI and genetic engineering and such. He is visiting a much less advanced (though still far past us) alien empire where almost the entire culture is based around playing a super complicated board game, and participating in a tournament. It has become obvious that he is very skilled, even compared to many of the natives, and the press has turned against him for this reason: > [@](#): > > The news-agencies at once decided that Gurgeh was a menace to the Empire and the common good, and began a campaign to have him thrown off EĂ€. They claimed he was in telepathic touch with the Limiting Factor, or with the robot called Flere- Imsaho, that he used all manner of disgusting drugs which were kept in the vice den and drug emporium he lived in on the roof of the Grand Hotel, then–as though just discovering the fact–**that he could make the drugs inside his own body (which was true) using glands ripped out of little children in appaling and fatal operations (which was not).** The effect of these drugs seemed to be to turn him into either a super-computer or an alien sex-maniac (even both, in some reports). Eta: and another great line: > [@](#): > > “Is all this serious?” Gurgeh said, turning, amused, from the screen to the drone. > “Deadly serious,” Flere-Imsaho told him. > Gurgeh laughed and shook his head. **He thought the common people must be remarkably stupid if they believed all this nonsense.** ---
**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 28, 2024, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/87 "2024-08-28T22:06:25Z")
That’s not Banks anticipating QAnon. That’s QAnon ripping off millennia of prior folklore and slanders. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2024, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/88 "2024-08-28T22:30:09Z")
Going back in the thread, for me the thing about ST Court Martial isn’t the faked recording. Once I knew how a TV worked, I immediately saw it would be theoretically possible to make a TV image show anything. After all, it’s ALL just dots on a screen. No, it was that I couldn’t figure out how making a fake recording affected Spock’s chess game. Why should there be any connection at all? Then I realized - the encryption! For the recordings to be of any evidentiary value, they have to be protected. Finney creating the recording wasn’t the problem, Finney beating the system in place to prevent him from doing just that was the genius. And the encryption must run through the entire programming and data storage, otherwise it would be too easy. There were likely other data errors, just no one ever noticed. An the writers were so far thinking they didn’t even know that’s what was happening in the show. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![WildaBeast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wildabeast/32/6_2.png) [@WildaBeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildaBeast)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2024, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/89 "2024-08-28T22:46:44Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > I’d also note that the form of the original communicator was not unlike that of the “flip phones” from the early 2000s, > [@kenobi\_65](#): > > The “PADD” portable tablet device in ST:TNG was very similar, in form and function, to tablets like the iPad, which came out 20 years later. I think a lot of the time in cases like this it’s not so much that Star Trek “predicted” flip phones and iPads. It’s more like people watched Star Trek during their formative years, grew up to become engineers, and went “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we built a device that looks like that thing they used in Star Trek”. In other words sci-fi often influences what future engineers decide to build. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2024, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/90 "2024-08-28T23:17:05Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > That’s QAnon ripping off millennia of prior folklore and slanders. Indeed, the whole “adrenochrome” thing is just Blood Libel with a fresh coat of paint on it. > **[Blood libel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel)** > > Blood libel or ritual murder libel (also blood accusation) is an antisemitic canard which falsely accuses Jews of murdering Christians in order to use their blood in the performance of religious rituals. Echoing very old myths of secret cultic practices in many prehistoric societies, the claim, as it is leveled against Jews, was rarely attested to in antiquity. According to Tertullian, it originally emerged in late antiquity as an accusation made against members of the ear Blood libels often ... ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2024, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/91 "2024-08-28T23:26:40Z")
> [@Nyvaak](#): > > Perhaps Mad Magazine doesn’t count as science fiction, but they sure had a prescient piece back in 1957 when they showed [fake backdrops](https://cidu.info/tag/mad-magazine/) for video phone calls. > > Today’s virtual backdrops have nothing on these pull-down screens to fool the person at the other end. Didn’t Pee Wee’s playhouse have a phone booth where he’d “video call” a friend
 after choosing and pulling down a shade behind him, with a foreign scene on it? It’s been too long, but I think the callee would often say "Oh, Pee Wee, are you in _Paris?!?"_ ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2024, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/92 "2024-08-28T23:39:56Z")
> [@velomont](#): > > And someone mentioned _The Machine Stops_ upthread. I spent a summer working at a camp with only one paperback book. It included _The Machine Stops,_ so I read that probably fifty times back in the '60s. I remember thinking that the most prescient part would be that _WHEN_ people became addicted to computers, they’d also end up bored with real life. _“Life away from The Machine gives me no new ideas
”_ ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2024, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/93 "2024-08-29T01:25:03Z")
> [@WildaBeast](#): > > people watched Star Trek during their formative years, grew up to become engineers, and went “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we built a device that looks like that thing they used in Star Trek > **[What invention came about because of Star Trek?](https://www.quora.com/What-invention-came-about-because-of-Star-Trek)** > > Answer (1 of 16): Hi there, > > Some ? SOME ? SOME !? > > Actually there are a few out there
.. > > \[1\] Transparent Aluminium > > Some in space science claim that aluminum produced in space would be transparent
true or false? > > Its called ALON, btw, and how I... ---
**Author:** ![Zyada](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zyada/32/3028_2.png) [@Zyada](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zyada)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2024, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/94 "2024-08-30T00:13:21Z")
I have to mention a short story by Anne McCaffery called Dull Drums, even though I think it’s almost the opposite of what the OP asked for. It has the one worldwide computer common to SciFi before PCs took over. The main character and her classmates are purging old interactions by deceased people who had used the computer: “the woman who recorded her husband snoring so she could prove to him that he did. After he died, she’d have that played back every night so she could get to sleep.” and “the man who programmed a report of his luxury credit standing to wake him up every morning and put him to sleep at night. Then he won the Index Lottery and canceled the instructions.” There were also people putting their writing on the computer (blogs?) These things have happened, just with PCs. However, I think she got two things wrong - that people didn’t use the Computer to communicate, and this “The subtle change of fear and suspicion of his neighbors to fear and suspicion of the computer-based society: then a gradual acceptance of computer-assistance. We all started with records beginning in 1990 when the main Comp banks were switched on in this Metropolis, so you should all see what I mean. By mid-century I noticed a definite drop in the incidence of recorded paranoia, and the incidence and repetition of psycho-chem therapy. It’s noticeable because people begin inputting the most deeply intimate secrets. They’ve realized that no one can break a privacy seal" ---
**Author:** ![outlierrn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/outlierrn/32/3005_2.png) [@outlierrn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/outlierrn)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2024, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/95 "2024-09-01T22:53:23Z")
Everything kinda blew up at about 3am in the ER today, I’m on the phone listening to a smarmy recorded message, a mindless, souless, treacly voice filled with satisfaction despite being of no actual help. I’m helpless with frustration and no better option than to let it run its course and I’m thinking ‘Sirius Cybernetics belongs in this thread.’ ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2024, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/96 "2024-09-01T23:06:12Z")
For decades now corporations have wanted anyone who happens to be a human being to talk on the phone like a robot anyway, regurgitating the carefully crafted-by-lawyers non-promises. The goal had already been to make blindly followed bureaucratic and corporate rules impersonate intelligent thought. The use of Large Language Models doesn’t detract anything at this point. ---
**Author:** ![DennisMM](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dennismm/32/17003_2.png) [@DennisMM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DennisMM)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2024, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/97 "2024-09-05T00:03:59Z")
1946: Two-way wrist radio With upgrades, its range increased from an initial 500 miles to 2500 miles, making it **exactly** the communication tool needed by a city cop! > **[2-Way Wrist Radio](https://dicktracy.fandom.com/wiki/2-Way_Wrist_Radio)** > > Introduced in January 1946, the 2-Way Wrist Radio was an invention of industrialist Diet Smith's son Brilliant. Like many of Smith's inventions, it was kept from the public marketplace and given over exclusively to the use of law enforcement. The... 1964: Two-way wrist TV Camera with a 180-degree image field and Atomic Light! > **[2-Way Wrist TV](https://dicktracy.fandom.com/wiki/2-Way_Wrist_TV)** > > The 2-Way Wrist TV was an upgrade to the 2-Way Wrist Radio that had been developed by Diet Smith Industries. It allowed users to transmit images of themselves, rather than only their voices. It also featured a 180-degree range of vision and an atomic... 1986: Two-way wrist computer Long-range wireless link to law-enforcement databases, lie detector, stylus-type probe for chemical analysis – no more tasting that white powder to see if it’s “the real stuff”! Later upgraded to accept external micro data discs, including one with a “list of all the known racist kooks in the city.” > **[2-Way Wrist Computer](https://dicktracy.fandom.com/wiki/2-Way_Wrist_Computer)** > > The 2-Way Wrist Computer was an wrist communicator upgrade introduced by Diet Smith in 1986 for Dick Tracy's police department. The Wrist Computer improved upon the 2-Way Wrist TV by adding a variety of additional functions, including a long-range... 1997: Wrist Geenee Added RADAR, SONAR, GPS, holographic projector, X-ray camera,software to determine passwords and lock combinations. Upgraded with a TASER – oh, boy! > **[Wrist Geenee](https://dicktracy.fandom.com/wiki/Wrist_Geenee)** > > The Wrist Geenee was an upgrade to the 2-Way Wrist Computer. It was introduced to Dick Tracy by Diet Smith during Tracy's initial encounter with Nutsy. The Wrist Geenee included several new features, such as RADAR and SONAR capabilities, as well as... 2011: Wrist Wizard All of the above, plus a satellite phone, plus holo-projected keyboard. It’s iPhone 88! > **[Wrist Wizard](https://dicktracy.fandom.com/wiki/Wrist_Wizard)** > > The Wrist Wizard was an invention of Diet Smith. It was introduced during Dick Tracy's encounter with the previously presumed-deceased B-B Eyes. It replaced the Wrist Geenee. The Wrist Wizard included many features of Smith's previous devices... ---
**Author:** ![zimaane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2024, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/98 "2024-09-05T12:47:04Z")
Jules Verne’s _A Journey from the Earth to the Moon_ written in 1865 had the astronauts take off from Florida, to better match the moon’s orbit and take advantage of the rotation of the Earth. (They were launched from a cannon rather than on a rocket, though.) ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2024, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/99 "2024-09-05T13:04:39Z")
> [@zimaane](#): > > Jules Verne’s _A Journey from the Earth to the Moon_ written in 1865 had the astronauts take off from Florida, to better match the moon’s orbit and take advantage of the rotation of the Earth. There are a lot of other interesting parallels, as Life magazine pointed out in an illustrated article. The vehicle used in Verne’s book was made of aluminum (light weight but strong) and almost the size of the Apollo command module and its attached service module. The progress was monitored by a huge telescope at about the same latitude as the launch. Of course, the idea of using a giant gun to shoot people to the moon would work, in principle, but the people would be squashed to jelly by the huge acceleration. The idea didn’t seem to bother the Martians in H.G. Wells’ _War of the Worlds_, who seem to have used a similar cannon to propel themselves to Earth. Evidently Martians, although they had squishy bodies, can take sudden acceleration without harm. (Also deceleration – their “cylinders” didn’t use parachutes or any other means of slowing down, but simply crashed into the earth when they got here.) That’s why we used rockets. I’m sure Verne was aware of the lethality of his moon shot, but ignored it in the interest of telling a good story. That he was aware of the limitations of his technology is made pretty clear in the rarely-mentioned _second_ sequel to _From the Earth to the Moon_, a novel variously translated as _Topsy-Turvy_ and _The Purchase of the North Pole_. In it, the power of a much larger gun than the one used for the moon shot is see n as woefully inadequate to make a perceptible change in the tilt of the Earth’s axis. Despite the similarity in appearance of the pointy-ended bullet-shaped craft in Verne’s novel, it was a ballistic shell rather than a rocket. It really _was_ a bullet, shot from a giant gun. Before they decided to put passengers in it, the projectile was going to be a sphere, like a musket ball. Edward Everett Hale’s “Brick Moon” in his 19th century story was also sphere, but into orbit by a giant catapult. Most realistic 19th century (and early twentieth century) trips to outer space involved ballistics, and their craft were shaped like bullets or spheres. Otherwise they used anti-gravity devices (as in Robert Cromie’s _A Plunge into Space_, or Wells’ _First Men in the Moon_. Or even more fanciful methods, including balloons. The idea of a rocket to achieve interplanetary flight hadn’t yet made a mark in the public consciousness, or those of science fiction writers. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2024, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/100 "2024-09-05T18:30:04Z")
Had to share this anecdote from William Schechter’s seminal 1970 volume _The History of Negro Humor in America_. > During [Dick Gregory’s] opening before Massachusetts Institute of Technology students, he told them he expected “robots” and, pointing to, the huge pipe along one wall of the auditorium, said, “Ain’t that a computer? One of them mad machines you put the questions in, like ‘Is there a God?’ and it goes _whirrr_ and _whickitcha-whickitcha_ and finally comes up with a slip of paper with the answer: ‘There is, now!’” Somebody’s been reading! ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2024, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/101 "2024-09-05T19:00:35Z")
That should be “the huge pipe _organ_”. Sorry, Dick. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128.md?page=6)