# 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:** 14\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2024, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/102 "2024-09-05T19:48:46Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > 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. I think that while people knew what rockets were, they didn’t really grasp that they worked in space. ---
**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 5, 2024, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/103 "2024-09-05T19:51:33Z")
To a surprisingly late date people thought that if there was no surrounding atmosphere the rocket exhaust would simply fly away into space without giving any impetus to the rocket. One might imagine asking people who thought that what would happen if you put a sail in front of the exhaust. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2024, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/104 "2024-09-06T05:50:12Z")
In fact, _The New York Times_ published a famous editorial in 1920 criticizing Robert Goddard for suggesting that rockets could be used in space. > “That professor Goddard, with his ‘chair’ in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react — to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.” The newspaper published an apology on July 17, 1969, the day that Apollo 11 launched. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2024, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/105 "2024-09-06T06:01:31Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Otherwise they used anti-gravity devices (as in Robert Cromie’s _A Plunge into Space_, or Wells’ _First Men in the Moon_. Or, probably the first, the abares from Star by C. I. Defontenay, from 1854. (Republished as DAW #167, October 1975.) Silverberg has an Asimov’s column about it, and I realized that I owned it, but hadn’t gotten to it yet because the cover makes it look like a fantasy. ---
**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 6, 2024, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/106 "2024-09-06T13:53:18Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Or, probably the first, the abares from Star by C. I. Defontenay, from 1854. (Republished as DAW #167, October 1975.) > Silverberg has an Asimov’s column about it, and I realized that I owned it, but hadn’t gotten to it yet because the cover makes it look like a fantasy. Yeah, there were several stories about anti-gravity ships o get into space, even before Wells’ comparatively late book. Jules Verne took Wells to task for using such an unscientific method of getting into space, but he wrote an introduction to Cromie’s book (or at least allowed his name to be used – it’s questionable that he ever actually read Cromie’s book) that used the same device. But even Kurd Lasswitz used anti-gravity to let his Martians come to earth in his _Zwei Planete_, published the same year as _War of the Worlds._ That people didn’t think of rockets as the way to get into space is kind of surprising, when you think about it. People knew about rockets and fireworks – rockets were used in wartime, after all (look at Francis Scott Key’s _The Star Spangled Banner_). If you’re screwing around wih the ideas of using giant guns or balloons or catapults, you’d think more people would think of the idea of taming rockets from the wild, destructive, and barely-controlled agents that they were and use them to propel things high into the sky deliberately. But by and large they didn’t. Not even Jules Verne, who was cleatly trying to come up with a way to do it. Or Wells, or any of the early science fiction writers. The Scottish scientist William Leitch clearly did in the 1850s, an published his idea of using a rocket. But it evidently wasn’t a popular book, and no writer of Verne’'s calibre (no pun intended) picked up the idea. The Russian Konstantin Tsiolkovsky came up with the same idea independently, it seems, but not until 1903. And he was only published in obscure Russian journals (A pity, too – he came up with a lot of spce innovations). It wasn’t until people began actively experimenting with rockets that they at last made a dent in public consciousness and into science fiction. There appear to have been a couple of early uses of rockets in science fiction before 1900 – the Science Fiction Encyclopdia lists Edward Peirce’s _Gulliver Joi_ from 1851 (before Leitch!) and John Munro’s _a Trip to Venus_ (1897), but they were either not well-known or influential. Edwin Arnold’s Gulliver Jones got to Mars by flying carpet. Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter got there by astral projection. Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Carson Napier got to Venus by rocket – but not until 1934, a quarter of a century after John Carter, nd well after other people were flying around in rocket ships. (Burroughs was also late to adopt ray guns. The Martian in his early stories used swords and rifles. He didn’t start using ray guns until after Buck Rogers did.) > **[William Leitch (scientist)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Leitch_(scientist))** > > William Leitch (20 May 1814 – 9 May 1864) was a Scottish astronomer, naturalist and mathematician, and a minister of the Church of Scotland. Leitch studied mathematics and science at the University of Glasgow, and moved to Canada in 1860 to take the post of principal at Queen's University. > Space historian Robert Godwin published in October 2015 his discovery that Leitch gave the first modern scientific explanation of the potential for space exploration using rockets (1861). Leitch was said to... > **[Rocket](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket)** > > A rocket (from Italian: rocchetto, lit. 'bobbin/spool')\[nb 1\] is a vehicle that uses jet propulsion to accelerate without using any surrounding air. A rocket engine produces thrust by reaction to exhaust expelled at high speed. Rocket engines work entirely from propellant carried within the vehicle; therefore a rocket can fly in the vacuum of space. Rockets work more efficiently in a vacuum and incur a loss of thrust due to the opposing pressure of the atmosphere. > Multistage rockets are capa... > **[SFE: Rockets](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/rockets)** > > Welcome to the fourth edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2024, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/107 "2024-09-06T14:02:12Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > If you’re screwing around wih the ideas of using giant guns or balloons or catapults, you’d think more people would think of the idea of taming rockets from the wild, destructive, and barely-controlled agents that they were and use them to propel things high into the sky deliberately. I suspect the “wild” and “barely controlled” issues were a major factor. in the late 1800s, they didn’t have the kind of control surfaces and what-not that would make a rocket a useful tool for accurate long-distance travel. By contrast, accurate long-distance shell fire was pretty commonplace by that point. Hitting the Moon is a matter of both distance and accuracy. A shell already has the accuracy, so all you’d have to do is up the distance, and we already knew that bigger guns sent shells farther. An even bigger gun is a small leap to make, as compared to an accurate rocket that relies on technologies they hadn’t even contemplated yet. ---
**Author:** ![EnolaStraight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/41988e/32.png) [@EnolaStraight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EnolaStraight)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2024, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/108 "2024-09-06T14:17:15Z")
Mark Twain predicted the Internet in a sci-fi story…in 1898. [Mark Twain Predicts the Internet in 1898: Read His Sci-Fi Crime Story, “From The ‘London Times’ in 1904” | Open Culture](https://www.openculture.com/2014/11/mark-twain-predicts-the-internet-in-1898-read-his-sci-fi-crime-story-from-the-london-times-in-1904.html) He already knew of the telegraph and telephone, and logically deduced the coming availability of the transmission of sound AND image…a television viewscreen. From there, with ordinary people broadcasting sound and image from their own devices, he concluded the content would be mostly…_bullshit_. ---
**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 6, 2024, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/109 "2024-09-06T14:52:12Z")
> [@Horatius](#): > > I suspect the “wild” and “barely controlled” issues were a major factor. in the late 1800s, they didn’t have the kind of control surfaces and what-not that would make a rocket a useful tool for accurate long-distance travel. Right, but the essence of good science fiction is the ability to extrapolate beyond what currently exists to imagine how the currently speculative can be made possible. When Jules Verne wrote _20,000 Leagues Under the Sea_ the French submarine _Plongeur_ could dive to 10 meters and travel at 4 knots, and could only maintain that for a relatively short time before its supply of compressed air ran out. His had to be resupplied by a support surface ship. Verne imagined a _Nautilus_ powered by virtually inexhaustible electric batteries that could dive to depths of thousands of feet and travel at 43 knots. It wasn’t that no adequate way of controlling rocket flight existed, it was that hardly anyone imagined that the problem could be solved and used as a practical form of transportation. It wasn’t even important that they figure out exactly or even approximately how this could be done -=- the crucial step was _imagining_ the possibility. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2024, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/110 "2024-09-06T15:09:05Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > It wasn’t even important that they figure out exactly or even approximately how this could be done -=- the crucial step was _imagining_ the possibility. But in writing, plausibility also matters. In the submarine example, as you said, subs already existed, they just didn’t have much endurance. “What if they had near-infinite endurance?” isn’t that a big a leap - we already had surface ships that could cross oceans non-stop, so just extrapolate that to a sub, and imagine what you might see. But rockets? “Okay, they’re going to fly to the Moon in a rocket, a technology notorious for flying off course within seconds of launch. Yeah, right!” The implausibility distracts from the main point, of a journey to the Moon. Just using a bigger gun eliminates this stumbling block. ---
**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 6, 2024, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/111 "2024-09-06T16:10:13Z")
> [@Horatius](#): > > But rockets? “Okay, they’re going to fly to the Moon in a rocket, a technology notorious for flying off course within seconds of launch. Yeah, right!” The implausibility distracts from the main point, of a journey to the Moon. Just using a bigger gun eliminates this stumbling block. Brilliance comes in when making the conceptual leap from not only a better type of whatever to a differnt approach. Jules Verne had done this before. His _aeronef_ in _Robur the Conqueror_ differed very significabntly from other flying machines in many ways, and with a significanr leap in the material it was made of. His _Propellor Island_ was unlike anything proposed before. He was the kind of writer who could have made such a leap, and it’s rather a shame that he didn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2024, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/112 "2024-09-06T22:19:29Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > I think that while people knew what rockets were, they didn’t really grasp that they worked in space. I believe the NY Times had an editorial a hundred years ago claiming that of course rockets couldn’t work in space because they had nothing to push against. Incidentally a Canadian engineer named Gerald Bull spent years trying to build a giant cannon to launch comm sats from. There is said to be an abandoned cannon somewhere in Barbados that he worked on. He was assassinated when he was about to build a giant cannon for Saddam Hussein. In Foundation, Asimov had a word processor. But it was just that, not a computer. There did use to be dedicated word processors into about 1980, but disappeared once software like Word Perfect came out. And Asimov also imagined a world wide computer that you had to go to a local outlet to access it. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2024, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/113 "2024-09-06T22:21:59Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > In Foundation, Asimov had a word processor. But it was just that, not a computer. There did use to be dedicated word processors into about 1980, but disappeared once software like Word Perfect came out. He also had people using microfilm. 15,000 years in the future, and people were using a medium that would become obsolete in his own lifetime. I’m actually not that big a fan of Asimov. He was a very smart guy who was great at extrapolating, but he wasn’t that imaginative. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2024, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/114 "2024-09-06T23:33:43Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > I believe the NY Times had an editorial a hundred years ago claiming that of course rockets couldn’t work in space because they had nothing to push against. I’ve heard that somewhere too. > [@Most prescient piece of science fiction](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/104): > > In fact, The New York Times published a famous editorial in 1920 criticizing Robert Goddard for suggesting that rockets could be used in space. “That professor Goddard, with his ‘chair’ in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react — to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.” … ---
**Author:** ![JacobSwan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a6a055/32.png) [@JacobSwan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JacobSwan)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2024, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128/115 "2024-09-07T12:12:08Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > He was assassinated when he was about to build a giant cannon for Saddam Hussein. A section of that used to be on display at the museum in Woolwich, London until it closed. I think all 3 of my children have been inside it, but none of them ended up on the moon. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-prescient-piece-of-science-fiction/1006128.md?page=5)