# Predictive failures of science fiction **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 20, 2004, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predictive-failures-of-science-fiction/251333 "2004-06-20T19:38:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2004, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predictive-failures-of-science-fiction/251333/41 "2004-06-21T22:13:42Z")
Another early take on the Net (although this one was by a real arpanet user who predicted VR and anticpated the whole “cyperpunk” movement) was Vernor Vinge’s wonderful **True Names** (in which he makes the analogy that one’s screen name is like a wizard’s public name and just as you can get a wizard by the short-n-curlies by learning his true name, so to can you get a hacker\* if you learn _their_ true name. Written in 1981(?) it’s, as far as I know, the first story about the internet by someone who actually _used_ it. Fenris \*either usage ---
**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:** [June 21, 2004, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predictive-failures-of-science-fiction/251333/42 "2004-06-21T22:29:36Z")
> [@](#): > > …you can get a wizard by the short-n-curlies by learning his true name… And that would make that his pubic name? ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Rieux](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@Dr.Rieux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Rieux)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2004, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predictive-failures-of-science-fiction/251333/43 "2004-06-21T23:06:16Z")
> [@HPL](#): > > I remember in Arthur C. Clarke’s novel of **2001: A Space Oddessy** , Dr. Floyd had something like a PDA he was using while on the shuttle to the moon. It mentioned that he could use it to read any newspaper on earth instantly, which would be updated every half hour. That was in the late 1960’s. > > Maybe not quite the internet we know today, but a pretty good start. On the other hand, Floyd was taking a **Pan-Am** flight to a huge, wheel-shaped space station, and when he got there he spoke with a scientist from the **USSR**. 😉 I’ve long felt that the two most common misconceptions about SF are that it’s main purposes are to (a) predict the future, and (b) teach science. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2004, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predictive-failures-of-science-fiction/251333/44 "2004-06-21T23:09:48Z")
> [@Fenris](#): > > Another early take on the Net (although this one was by a real arpanet user who predicted VR and anticpated the whole “cyperpunk” movement) was Vernor Vinge’s wonderful **True Names** Hmmm. Has anybody actually seen **Fenris** lately? Can we be sure he hasn’t been killed and replaced with a simulation? If he has been, the world is in dire peril. And I call dibs on his comics. ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2004, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predictive-failures-of-science-fiction/251333/45 "2004-06-21T23:36:18Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > My favorite misssed prediction - that the first landing on the moon would be televised. Uh-uh. Arthur C. Clarke included this in his novel _Master of Space_. In 1988, letters to _Isaac Asimov’s SF Magazine_ listed 8 earlier stories with this idea, the earliest being the 1918 story “The Planteer” by Homer Eon Flint. In the story, viewers could also talk to the astronauts. ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2004, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predictive-failures-of-science-fiction/251333/46 "2004-06-21T23:37:44Z")
That should be _The Planeteer_. ---
**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:** [June 21, 2004, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predictive-failures-of-science-fiction/251333/47 "2004-06-21T23:49:17Z")
> [@rowrrbazzle](#): > > Uh-uh. Arthur C. Clarke included this in his novel _Master of Space_. In 1988, letters to _Isaac Asimov’s SF Magazine_ listed 8 earlier stories with this idea, the earliest being the 1918 story “The Planteer” by Homer Eon Flint. In the story, viewers could also talk to the astronauts. Would that be Prelude to Space in the US? I’ll look it up - and the IASFM letters. Still, the thing about sf is that with so many variants on a theme, someone will get almost everything right sometime. Very few moon landing stories had this - and I remember thinking so on July 20, 1969. Which is really the answer to the OP. There are so many stories, someone will get lots right, but the vast majority will get everything wrong, and all the moreso because of the purpose of sf, which, as has been said, is not prediction. Orwell was not really talking about 1984, and Pohl and Kornbluth were not seriously predicting a world run by Madison Avenue in _The Space Merchants._. But all of this makes us more able to deal with the changes that actually do come. ---
**Author:** ![HPL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3da27b/32.png) [@HPL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HPL)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2004, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predictive-failures-of-science-fiction/251333/48 "2004-06-22T00:07:13Z")
> [@Dr. Rieux](#): > > On the other hand, Floyd was taking a **Pan-Am** flight to a huge, wheel-shaped space station, and when he got there he spoke with a scientist from the **USSR**. > 😉 > > I’ve long felt that the two most common misconceptions about SF are that it’s main purposes are to (a) predict the future, and (b) teach science. Though ACC was off by only 10 years on the USSR thing. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2004, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predictive-failures-of-science-fiction/251333/49 "2004-06-22T00:42:03Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > And the Arpanet was much older than 1979. I used it in 1974 to log into Stanford to play with the Parry AI program. Yes! Another early adaptor! I played “bugs and drugs”, “fighter pilot” (got shot down by some guy from California), and posted to the Tolkien bulletin board (what a surprise) via the Arpanet at Johns Hopkins in 1979. I think AC Clarke really has the best track record of predictions, with his PDA and his satellites. ---
**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2004, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predictive-failures-of-science-fiction/251333/50 "2004-06-22T01:12:51Z")
> [@](#): > > Quote: > BrainGlutton, the writer who goes back in time and writes stories set in his world idea has been done in many variations over the years. > > Quote: > !!! News to me! I’ve never read such a story, and I consider myself a hardcore SF reader! Could you name some examples? > There was a story by Harry Turtledove that pretty much used this exact idea. I think it was “Hindsight”. A better example might be “The Shape of Things That Came” by, if I recall, Richard Deming. > [@](#): > > No modern writer could write in the style of the 1920s and 1930s because we’ve lost any contact with the ways those worlds thought. Untrue. ---
**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2004, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predictive-failures-of-science-fiction/251333/51 "2004-06-22T01:16:52Z")
One area where a lot of science fiction from past decades is **really** dated isn’t the technological extrapolations, but the **lack** of predicted changes in common social patterns. A writer of the 1930’s might be very imaginative when it came to FTL spaceships, robots, aliens, etc., but show no inkling that the role of women in society was going to change. There’s also a lot of casual racism in some old sf that really seems embarrassing now. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2004, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predictive-failures-of-science-fiction/251333/52 "2004-06-22T01:57:51Z")
> [@Baldwin](#): > > A better example might be “The Shape of Things That Came” . A slightly irregular cylinder capped by an irregular cone? ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2004, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predictive-failures-of-science-fiction/251333/53 "2004-06-22T02:08:11Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Very few moon landing stories had this - and I remember thinking so on July 20, 1969. That’s because your average SF writer was stuck in the mud making parallels between **space** exploration and the exporatory sailing ships that were sent out in the late Renaissance. They imagined ships full of large, brave crews launching into space for the unknown and being totally out of communication with Earth in the process. They basically forgot about a little invention called “radio.” They never thought to have a “Mission Control” center that was in constant communication with the spacecraft crew. ---
**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:** [June 22, 2004, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predictive-failures-of-science-fiction/251333/54 "2004-06-22T02:38:19Z")
Well, Heinlein’s “first man on the Moon” story had a single intrepid explorer, and he didn’t forget about radio. It was omitted from the ship to save weight (the same reason the crew was a single man instead of the originally-planned three). Even without the radio, there _were_ ground tracking stations, which is about as close as you can get to Mission Control without two-way communications. ---
**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:** [June 22, 2004, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predictive-failures-of-science-fiction/251333/55 "2004-06-22T03:04:46Z")
Although it got the particulars of dress and speech wrong, I think _A Clockwork Orange_ predicted the punk movement by several years Ray Bradbury wrote a short story about an noncomformist who got so sick of people yakking into their cell phones on the subway that he carried a jamming unit with him. One of the biggest errors of science fiction was the presumption that radiation would lead to spectacular terogenic mutations. Another was that we wouldn’t be doing much in space until nuclear rockets were available. Most everyone in the '50s thought that if we hadn’t blown ourselves up by now, some sort of world government would be running things. ---
**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:** [June 22, 2004, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predictive-failures-of-science-fiction/251333/56 "2004-06-22T03:10:10Z")
ralph124c writes: \> What most SF writers have missed big time…the ecological catastrophy that we \> face due to overpopulation. I am no pessemist, but I don’t see any strong \> efforts by our “leaders” to try to correct these problems…and I think this is \> because most politicians are lawyers, with very little scientific understanding. Most politicians are not lawyers. For instance, only 42% of Congress were trained as lawyers (and some never practiced law). And the politicians trained as lawyers are not generally the ones with the least scientific knowledge. Lots of s.f. stories discussed the possibility of overpopulation and ecological catastrophe. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2004, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predictive-failures-of-science-fiction/251333/57 "2004-06-22T03:25:46Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Although it got the particulars of dress and speech wrong, I think _A Clockwork Orange_ predicted the punk movement by several years 😕 The punk rockers of the '70s might have been alienated rebels against social norms, who had little respect for the law, but their lifestyle was not defined by crimes of property and random acts of violence. ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2004, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predictive-failures-of-science-fiction/251333/58 "2004-06-22T03:27:40Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > What most SF writers have missed big time…the ecological catastrophy that we face due to overpopulation. I am no pessemist, but I don’t see any strong efforts by our “leaders” to try to correct these problems…and I think this is because most politicians are lawyers, with very little scientific understanding. Wrong. I don’t personally buy the “ecological catstrophe” hysteria (and I have absoutely \* no\* intention of discussing that statement further), but just looking at Hugo winning novels, a bunch of them harped on (or at least touched on) overpopulation. It’s probably the single biggest recurring theme that the Hugo winning novels share and Hugo winners tend to be at least somewhat representative of SF (or at least US SF) as a whole for that year. At a quick glance, **Gateway** , **Ringworld** (although it’d been solved…but the earlier Known Space novels dealt with it), **Moon is a Harsh Mistress** , **Stand on Zanzibar** , and **Forever War** all dealt with overpopulation. Outside the Hugo winners, off the top of my head, **Caves of Steel** dealt with it, **Farmer in the Sky** dealt with it, **Make Room, Make Room** dealt with it. From the mid-'60s through the early '80’s it was probably the single most overused theme there was. Fenris ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2004, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predictive-failures-of-science-fiction/251333/59 "2004-06-22T07:08:14Z")
> [@](#): > > And much science fiction has accurate “predictions” because it is talking about technological trends that have already started but are little noticed outside of the scientific and technical community, like Brin’s Earth. > > I’m old enough to have lived through a number of bear and bull markets in stocks. Whenever one comes along, journalists go back and comb through the literature and anoint as geniuses those who correctly predicted the outcome. But in fact the economic community predicted every possible outcome: one of them had to be right. Was that person wise or merely lucky? The proof comes after the next change in the market. Is that person correct again? Almost never. > > We are very good at going back and picking out anything that looks like it might have been an accurate prediction, even if we have to torture the interpretation to get it to conform with current reality. > > Some of these predictions look to be very prescient in hindsight. Some of them certainly are. But I have less and less confidence that I know which are which as the years go by and see a very different future arrive than anything I read about as a boy. But again, I feel you’re missing the whole point. The purpose of science fiction isn’t to make accurate predictions, so condemning it for failing to achieve a goal it never set for itself is pointless. It’d be like if I decided that the purpose of mystery novels was to describe murders and judged their success by how many murders they contained. I could then pronounce that several critically acclaimed mystery novels failed because they only had a single murder. To use an example from an author you named, let’s consider David Brin’s recent novel _Kiln People_. It’s a novel set in the near future where the ability to create clones and transfer your thoughts to them has become so cheap that many people do it on a daily basis. While David Brin never confided his opinions to me on the subject, I think I can safely guess he believes the probability of this technology arising in the next century is near zero. So by the standards you’ve described, his book is a failure from the first page. But what Brin was actually setting out to do was to describe how this technology would affect human society which he did so inventively. As a bonus, he also wrote a good mystery plot with a number of murders, so it works on that level too. ---
**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:** [June 22, 2004, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predictive-failures-of-science-fiction/251333/60 "2004-06-22T08:07:49Z")
> [@Fenris](#): > > Wrong. I don’t personally buy the “ecological catstrophe” hysteria (and I have absoutely \* no\* intention of discussing that statement further), but just looking at Hugo winning novels, a bunch of them harped on (or at least touched on) overpopulation. It’s probably the single biggest recurring theme that the Hugo winning novels share and Hugo winners tend to be at least somewhat representative of SF (or at least US SF) as a whole for that year. At a quick glance, **Gateway** , **Ringworld** (although it’d been solved…but the earlier Known Space novels dealt with it), **Moon is a Harsh Mistress** , **Stand on Zanzibar** , and **Forever War** all dealt with overpopulation. > > Outside the Hugo winners, off the top of my head, **Caves of Steel** dealt with it, **Farmer in the Sky** dealt with it, **Make Room, Make Room** dealt with it. From the mid-'60s through the early '80’s it was probably the single most overused theme there was. > > Fenris Also George R.R. Martin’s **Tuff Voyaging**. Generally speaking, SF writers tend to latch onto whatever subjects are roaming around in the public _zeitgeist_ and project them, greatly magnified, into the future. That’s why science fiction - especially mediocre, overly technical science fiction - dates itself so quickly. In the 50’s it was space exploration and technological optimism. In the late 60’s it was sexual and chemical liberalism, spiritual mumbo-jumbo and military cynicism. In the 70’s it was urban decay, corporate shenanigans and man-made apocolypsi. In the 80’s it was class disparity, anti-technologism and the all-pervasive media. The 90’s were, pehaps, all about post-modern ennui and the tech boom. I can’t tell you what the Big Issue of the 00’s is, yet, but I bet there are literally dozens of aspiring sci-fi writers currently scribbling down tales of galactic terrorists. The wheel goes round and round. Where it’ll stop, the SF community sure as hell doesn’t know. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predictive-failures-of-science-fiction/251333.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predictive-failures-of-science-fiction/251333.md?page=4)