# What did Science Fiction writers miss completly? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 3, 2008, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918 "2008-03-03T05:07:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![SSG\_Schwartz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@SSG\_Schwartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SSG_Schwartz)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2008, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/1 "2008-03-03T05:07:14Z")
Off the top of my head, none predicted cell phones and the internet. Most focused on rocket cars and video phones. Look at Jules Verne, he wrote about the traveling under the sea and around the globe, and that happened, but no one ever wrote about a phone you could carry with you. What else did they miss the mark on? SSG Schwartz ---
**Author:** ![Speaker\_for\_the\_Dead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@Speaker\_for\_the\_Dead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Speaker_for_the_Dead)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2008, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/2 "2008-03-03T05:09:59Z")
There was somebody who wrote about a network of video terminals connected. I remember reading about him. He’s usually touted as predicting the Internet. I’ll see if I can find his name. ---
**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:** [March 3, 2008, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/3 "2008-03-03T05:15:22Z")
[QUOTE=SSG Schwartz] Off the top of my head, none predicted cell phones and the internet. Most focused on rocket cars and video phones. Look at Jules Verne, he wrote about the traveling under the sea and around the globe, and that happened, but no one ever wrote about a phone you could carry with you. What else did they miss the mark on? SSG Schwartz [/QUOTE] Dick Tracy had a two way wrist radio (basically a phone) a long time before cellphones. So did Maxwell Smart. I believe Murray Leinster had a story involving something like the internet. EM Forster, in **The Machine Stop** had everyone networked together, without direct contact with each other. Very few people predicted laptops. There were intelligent PDAs, but not laptops. And I don’t recall anyone predicting that the first footsteps on the moon would be televised. ---
**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:** [March 3, 2008, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/4 "2008-03-03T05:17:33Z")
You’ll never get a good answer to this question because there is no consensus as to how close a prediction has to be in order to qualify for getting it right. People pull out what are to me the most amazing generalities and call them correct predictions. Yet, I’ve also read good articles that cite stories that made very accurate predictions of things that people say were never mentioned. To me it doesn’t matter much. SF is always about the present and not the future. The future is just a game put in to make it fun. Predictions are a side issue. Not one sf story in a hundred is written to make predictions about what’s going to happen. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2008, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/5 "2008-03-03T05:31:06Z")
Radio communications were fairly well invented as early as the telephone itself. Tesla gave demonstrations, I believe. Cellphones didn’t need to be predicted because the only thing stopping people from having it was getting the devices small enough and then tying it in to the telephony system. But true, they were never shown to be the big thing they are. But I’d imagine that that’s because Science Fiction does better if it only concerns itself with a few individual technologies–otherwise they would have to be explaining things every other paragraph. And for something that’s fairly well guaranteed to come eventually, there just isn’t much use in spending time on it. ---
**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:** [March 3, 2008, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/6 "2008-03-03T05:39:12Z")
I don’t recall anyone who predicted we would essentially abandon space exploration. I don’t recall anyone who predicted the sudden and peaceful breakup of the Soviet Union. On a more trivial note, I don’t recall anyone who predicted movie rentals. I can think of early predictions of movies being played at home but I don’t remember anyone predicting a business based on the idea of going out and renting a movie to watch at home. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2008, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/7 "2008-03-03T05:43:21Z")
Aren’t Star Trek communicators really close to current cell phones. You tap a button, you say you want to talk to and then the person’s communicator on the other end beeps. Sounds just a cell phone with voice recognition to me. ---
**Author:** ![LurkMeister](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3da27b/32.png) [@LurkMeister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LurkMeister)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2008, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/8 "2008-03-03T05:46:53Z")
Reading the OP reminded me of a story I wrote in the late 70s which had the main character checking his mail and then entering the bills into some sort of electronic system which would automatically pay them directly out of his “credit account”. Yesterday I did pretty much the same thing in real life. Was I predicting the future? I don’t think so, it just seemed to me to be a logically futuristic way of paying bills, which I threw in to help establish the setting of the story. (Which took place at the Milwaukee campus of the University of Illinois at Chicago; so much for my predictive abilities.) ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2008, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/9 "2008-03-03T05:50:08Z")
[QUOTE=SSG Schwartz] Off the top of my head, none predicted cell phones and the internet. [/QUOTE] Thanks to a previous thread on this board, I became aware of the notoriously corny [_John Jones’s Dollar_](http://staff.xu.edu/~polt/keeler/etexts/dollar.html) by Harry Stephen Keeler from 1914: > [@Stephen Keeler](#): > > From his coat pocket the professor drew an instrument which, > although supplied with an earpiece and a mouthpiece, had no wires whatever > attached. Raising it to his lips, he spoke: > > “Hello. Central Energy Station, please.” A pause ensued. "Central > Energy Station? This is the professor of history at the University of Terra > speaking. ---
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2008, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/10 "2008-03-03T05:54:53Z")
[QUOTE=Justin\_Bailey] Aren’t Star Trek communicators really close to current cell phones. You tap a button, you say you want to talk to and then the person’s communicator on the other end beeps. Sounds just a cell phone with voice recognition to me. [/QUOTE] Funny how real-world tech warped on by Trek communicator tech like it was standing still. There are some cell phones on the market which aren’t any bigger than TNG-style com badges-frankly in 3-400 years I’d expect wireless communication to involve tiny implants in the outer ear, unnoticeable by villians who would otherwise take your communicators away. ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2008, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/11 "2008-03-03T05:56:19Z")
Cell phones (though not the actual name) are “predicted” in Robert Heinlein’s 1948 _Space Cadet_, complete with the issues of potentially embarassing conversations in public places and the problem of always being available–a juvenile (college age) character comments that he packed his phone in his bag to keep his parents from being able to reach him. Of course Venus, the first manned expedition to which was in 1971 (although none of the crew thereof survived), has swamps and intelligent natives, etc. ---
**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:** [March 3, 2008, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/12 "2008-03-03T06:20:22Z")
[QUOTE=John DiFool] Funny how real-world tech warped on by Trek communicator tech like it was standing still. There are some cell phones on the market which aren’t any bigger than TNG-style com badges-frankly in 3-400 years I’d expect wireless communication to involve tiny implants in the outer ear, unnoticeable by villians who would otherwise take your communicators away. [/QUOTE] Which is why I say that sf is always about the present. Not only do the writers have trouble imaging what things will be like in the far future, but they also have the issue of making them interesting to the audience. A true far future tech book or tv show would have everything happen as if by magic. But how interesting would that be? Far better to take what people know and understand in the present and give it a twist to make it different and “future-y.” Unnoticeable implants aren’t very visible. Cool communicators tell a story without having to give exposition. Villains taking them away is story. Villains setting up interference in the gigagig band to disrupt a broadcast is a snoozefest. It’s always about telling the story. Making realistic predictions usually gets in the way. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2008, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/13 "2008-03-03T06:22:02Z")
I remember someone saying that SF predicted landing on the moon and that SF predicted TV. But no one predicted that the world would be watching someone land on the moon on TV. I don’t know if that is accurate. ---
**Author:** ![Knorf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/58956e/32.png) [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2008, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/14 "2008-03-03T06:34:22Z")
Isaac Asimov wrote several short stories about a global network of computers, which he called “Multivac,” which at least initially seems an awful lot like the internet. (In Asimov’s stories, a intelligent entity emerges from the huge number of nodes and connections.) But you have a network, and individual terminals which interface with it. Internet. In terms of technology, I don’t think you’re going to find anything that wasn’t thought of by some writer. Wall-size flat panel TVs? Rad Bradbury’s _Fahrenheit 451._ Etc. The biggest thing sci-fi writers consistently failed to predict, I agree, was the demise of the Soviet Union. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2008, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/15 "2008-03-03T06:36:29Z")
Robert Heinlein predicted something like the internet in _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_ and _For Us the Living_ (a horrid book, IMHO). In some of his works, discussing “The Crazy Years” (_Revolt in 2100_ and a short story which takes place on Venus that I can’t recall the title of), he makes mention that spaceflight is abandoned for a number of years. > [@John DiFool](#): > > Funny how real-world tech warped on by Trek communicator tech like it was standing still. There are some cell phones on the market which aren’t any bigger than TNG-style com badges-frankly in 3-400 years I’d expect wireless communication to involve tiny implants in the outer ear, unnoticeable by villians who would otherwise take your communicators away. In the novelization of _Star Trek: The Motion[del]less[/del] Picture_, Kirk has an implant in which the scenes of V’ger wiping out the Klingon ships are transmitted to him. ---
**Author:** ![Sir\_Rhosis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@Sir\_Rhosis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sir_Rhosis)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2008, 11:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/16 "2008-03-03T11:10:40Z")
The Leinster “internet” story from 1945 is called “A Logic Named Joe.” Sir Rhosis ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2008, 11:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/17 "2008-03-03T11:20:25Z")
As far as I can tell, SF usually posits future humanity as becoming more enlightened as a result of their information systems - I can’t recall any that predicted dumb things like conspiracy theories getting a free ride on the same systems. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2008, 11:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/18 "2008-03-03T11:24:23Z")
I haven’t really read any science fiction but did anyone predict that terrorism would become such a big problem? That the most powerful nation in the world would be battling ragged insurgents and saboteurs rather than an equally-matched, powerful army of evil or something? ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2008, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/19 "2008-03-03T11:32:36Z")
Orson Scott Card predicted the internet, and influential bloggers, even, in _Ender’s Game_. ---
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2008, 12:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/20 "2008-03-03T12:02:01Z")
Astronauts speechifing upon landing on the moon. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918.md?page=2)