IIRC, it’s related to the claim that Clarke invented the geo-synchronous satellite…
beat THAT for an accurate prediction of the future!
“Possession” as written in 1957, at the height of the change-car-model-appearance-every-year planned obsolescence craze. Like so much other sf, it was not trying to predict the future, but use a future setting as a way of making a point about the present.
Like about 90% of the other stories talked about in this thread.
I think, in your enthusiasm, you’ve misstated your case. Clarke certainly didn’t come up with the idea of geosynchronos orbit. He proposed the use of earthorbiting satellites to provide wide-area communications. To tell the truth, I don’t know if his original article required the use of geosynch satellites or not – you can use a constellation of lower-orbit satellites as well.
Clarke’s predictions, by the way, weren’t all in his stories. His communication satellites paper was in a technical journal, and he wrote science fact books like Interplanetary Flight: An Introduction to Astronautics.
The Manchurian Candidate.
Published in 1959. The Vietnam War.
Released in 1962. The Kennedy Assasination.
Re-made in 2004. The Iraq War.
For that, I was impressed with the 1976 movie Tunnelvision. It was a skit-comedy movie with Howard Hesseman, about congressional hearings over a controversial network, with most of the film being clips from mock TV shows and commercials. A lot of the over-the-top violence, tastelessness and general wierdness seemed commonplace even when I saw it in 1990 (imagine, a show that highlights wanted fugitives and offers rewards for viewers who turn them in!)
How did a novel published in 1959 predict or relate to the Vietnam War?