# 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:** 3
**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:** [March 3, 2008, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/41 "2008-03-03T20:29:28Z")
> [@](#): > > Except predictions about travel to the moon assumed that we’d have to wait for nuclear rockets, and once you had a nuclear rocket you could just blast off, aim for the moon, land, blast off again, aim for the earth, and land again, all on one tank of fuel, and that rocket would be no more expensive than a jet plane. This certainly isn’t true of all science fiction from the thirties to the fifties. The nuclear rocket was one scenario, but it’s an absurdly sweeping generalization to attribute that to all SF. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2008, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/42 "2008-03-03T20:34:46Z")
The automobile was widely predicted before Henry Ford. But no SF writer, AFAIK, came anywhere close to predicting the social, material and economic effects of widespread automobile ownership. ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2008, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/43 "2008-03-03T20:39:26Z")
A few things that we take for granted these days, but which I don’t think got predicted: (1) The main use of most general purpose computers these days is for playing games – and game-playing is what fuels a lot of technical advances in computer technology. (2) But most computer processors are not found in computers, but in other devices, like phones, cameras, cars, etc. (3) Not only do most people have a portable phone today, but they also use the phone to take pictures and videos. I don’t think anyone saw that coming, along with the point that people are now banned from taking their phones into secure environment because they can take pictures with their phones. ---
**Author:** ![TWDuke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e495f1/32.png) [@TWDuke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TWDuke)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2008, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/44 "2008-03-03T20:42:15Z")
I wish my cell phone was half as reliable as a Star Trek communicator when I call my neighbor, much less communicating from a planet’s interior to a ship somewhere in orbit (which I do only rarely). ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2008, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/45 "2008-03-03T20:57:53Z")
[QUOTE=Little Nemo] Which was published in 1982. I can predict the Giants will beat the Patriots now. My point was that nobody predicted it back in the thirties or forties. Some authors, like Heinlein, might have written about some interruption of space exploration because of a major crisis. But I don’t think anyone ever thought we would go the moon and then just decide to quit. [/QUOTE] Ben Bova’s story “Build me a Mountain” predicted that the manned space program would be abandoned because of lack of economic and political support. It was published in 1970, when hte Apollo Program was still going. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2008, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/46 "2008-03-03T20:58:39Z")
[QUOTE=CalMeacham] This certainly isn’t true of all science fiction from the thirties to the fifties. The nuclear rocket was one scenario, but it’s an absurdly sweeping generalization to attribute that to all SF. [/QUOTE] All right, I shouldn’t have said “nuclear rocket”. What I meant was, they assumed that once you’ve got your rocket ship built, you just point at the moon and off you go. They never anticipated building something along the lines of the Apollo program, with 99% of the craft thrown away, and hundreds of people at mission control, and the whole thing costing billions and billions of dollras. It just turns out that real world rockets aren’t powerful enough to work the way they do in old school science fiction. We would need a rocket motor that was an order of magnitude more energetic than is possible with chemical rockets. And sure, most science fiction didn’t get into how the rockets worked, they were just rockets, and you blasted off from Earth and headed for Mars. You might have to coast to get there, you might have to use a minimum energy orbit to get to Mars, but you could at least take off, go to Mars, and come back all in the same vehicle. And they problem is that this just isn’t possible given real world rockets that have a certain amount of delta-v and no more. The whole “you need the rocket fuel that lifts the rocket fuel that lifts the rocket fuel that lifts the rocket fuel that lifts the rocket fuel that lifts the capsule” issue was completely unforseen. ---
**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, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/47 "2008-03-03T20:59:29Z")
[QUOTE=JohnT] Actually, _Ender’s Game_ was released in 1985. > **[Ender's Game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ender's_Game)** > > Ender's Game is a 1985 military science fiction novel by American author Orson Scott Card. Set at an unspecified date in Earth's future, the novel presents an imperiled humankind after two conflicts with an insectoid alien species they dub "the buggers". In preparation for an anticipated third invasion, Earth's international military force recruits young children, including the novel's protagonist, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, to be trained as elite officers. The children learn military strategy an... [/QUOTE] Which was about the time domain names began. [Cite.](http://www.domainavenue.com/faq_history.htm) The Internet existed long before that, with IP addresses and email exchanged using paths through known backbones. Most of what is on the net today (except maybe blogs) was on Plato in the mid-70s. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2008, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/48 "2008-03-03T21:01:07Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] The automobile was widely predicted before Henry Ford. But no SF writer, AFAIK, came anywhere close to predicting the social, material and economic effects of widespread automobile ownership. [/QUOTE] Ford invented the automobile like Bill Gates invented the computer: [About this Reading Room | Science and Business Reading Room | Research Centers | Library of Congress](http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/auto.html) All Ford (or Gates) did was figure out how to mass market something already in existance. ---
**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, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/49 "2008-03-03T21:07:29Z")
[QUOTE=Lemur866] All right, I shouldn’t have said “nuclear rocket”. What I meant was, they assumed that once you’ve got your rocket ship built, you just point at the moon and off you go. They never anticipated building something along the lines of the Apollo program, with 99% of the craft thrown away, and hundreds of people at mission control, and the whole thing costing billions and billions of dollras. [/QUOTE] Wrong. See _The Man Who Sold the Moon_ by Robert Heinlein. It was a stepped rocket, launched from Kansas, IIRC, one of the stages was recoverable, the rest were discarded. The costs were exorbitant, there was a Mission Control which monitored things, and it only carried one crew member. ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2008, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/50 "2008-03-03T21:17:47Z")
[QUOTE=Tuckerfan] Wrong. See _The Man Who Sold the Moon_ by Robert Heinlein. It was a stepped rocket, launched from Kansas [/QUOTE] Why would one launch a rocket of any kind from Kansas? Even leaving out the consideration of picking up more velocity from launching near the equator, there are obvious safety reasons why you only want to launch a rocket in a direction that takes it over the ocean right after takeoff. Can’t do that from Kansas. Even if you launched over a very sparsely populated area, which Kansas does have, a rocket that goes down just after takeoff probably has a fair bit of stuff that could get a good grass fire going (and [wildfires are a hazard in Kansas](http://www.kansas.gov/ksadjutantgeneral/News%20Releases/2007/07-037.htm)). That’s a risk you don’t take if you launch over the ocean. ---
**Author:** ![Don\_Draper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Don\_Draper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_Draper)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2008, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/51 "2008-03-03T21:17:58Z")
This is not _science_ fiction, per se, but it’s amazing to me (in retrospect) how much of mid-20th century SF assumed that the U.S./U.S.S.R. coldwar standoff would still be taking place in the 21st century. Even into the 1980s, when it became clear that the Soviet Union was an unworkable mess of a nation, a lot of the SF presumes that there would be an eastern-communist/western-capitalist superpower standoff in place. Likewise, even after the iranian revolution occured, I can’t think of any SF (or future-based fiction to be more accurate) predicting the rise of fundamentalist islam as a major political force in the world. ---
**Author:** ![RedSwinglineOne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a9adbd/32.png) [@RedSwinglineOne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedSwinglineOne)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2008, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/52 "2008-03-03T21:24:18Z")
I think it is interesting looking back that most of the first Star Wars involved the Empire trying to ‘recover the stolen data tapes’. The blueprint was loaded into a droid which had to be flown across the galaxy. The information was never duplicated, transferred to a more conveniant storage system, or broadcast. Now, we take it for granted that any piece of information can be immediately transmitted anywhere in the world. Once something is out there, there is no getting it back. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2008, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/53 "2008-03-03T21:24:37Z")
Arg, I knew I should have included “except for ‘The Man Who Sold the Moon’”! Dang, I’m backpedaling like crazy, and I’ll admit I was overbroad. But the rocket in “The Man Who Sold the Moon” was just the first prototype. The Wright Flyer version, the proof of concept. They were going to go from that prototype directly to production models that would act like the Generic SF Rocket Ship. Space travel would scale just like air travel. The prototype might be a rickety contraption that would just barely work, but then we’d move on to a mature technology. But the problem is that the rickety prototype is all that there is. If we had poured money into the manned space program at Apollo Program levels for the last 40 years, we’d still be using something not much different than the Saturn V, and the payload would be just about the same. It might be more reliable, it might be slightly cheaper, but it would still require essentially the same apparatus doing the same job. You canna change the laws of physics, Captain. ---
**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:** [March 3, 2008, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/54 "2008-03-03T21:30:42Z")
[QUOTE=Loach] 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. [/QUOTE] An article by Martin Gardner states that Arthur C. Clarke did in “Prelude to Space” (aka “Master of Space”, written in 1947, published in 1951). The earliest known story of TV from the moon is “The Planeteer” (1918) by Homer Eon Flint. The activities of the astronauts were televised and the audience could ask them questions. This and a number of other stories were noted in letters in Asimov’s SF Magazine (April 1987 and November 1988). ---
**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, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/55 "2008-03-03T21:33:03Z")
[QUOTE=Otto] Not so much a lack of predictive ability as a gross underestimation of the resistance by the proud people of Wisconsin to the encroachments of flatlanders. [/QUOTE] Admittedly, it was a bit of an in-joke; a friend of mine always used to refer to Milwaukee as “Chicago’s largest suburb.” ---
**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, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/56 "2008-03-03T21:34:24Z")
[QUOTE=Anne Neville] Why would one launch a rocket of any kind from Kansas? Even leaving out the consideration of picking up more velocity from launching near the equator, there are obvious safety reasons why you only want to launch a rocket in a direction that takes it over the ocean right after takeoff. Can’t do that from Kansas. Even if you launched over a very sparsely populated area, which Kansas does have, a rocket that goes down just after takeoff probably has a fair bit of stuff that could get a good grass fire going (and [wildfires are a hazard in Kansas](http://www.kansas.gov/ksadjutantgeneral/News%20Releases/2007/07-037.htm)). That’s a risk you don’t take if you launch over the ocean. [/QUOTE] It’s actually explained in the short story, but I don’t completely remember the reasons why. I _think_ it has to do something with real estate in KS being extremely cheap. One of the reasons why the first stage _was_ recoverable was because of the launch from KS. It drifted down on parachutes (and killed a cow), the rest either burned up or splashed down in the ocean. They did consider launches closer to the equator early on, but discarded them. > [@Lemur866](#): > > The prototype might be a rickety contraption that would just barely work, but then we’d move on to a mature technology. But the problem is that the rickety prototype is all that there is. If we had poured money into the manned space program at Apollo Program levels for the last 40 years, we’d still be using something not much different than the Saturn V, and the payload would be just about the same. It might be more reliable, it might be slightly cheaper, but it would still require essentially the same apparatus doing the same job. You canna change the laws of physics, Captain. Not quite correct. The Apollo missions each brought more and more gear to the Moon, and the crews stayed for longer and longer periods of time. Had it continued just a few more missions, the crews would have been staying on the Moon for as much as a _month._ And while the laws of physics might be immutable, technology _isn’t_, modern rocket engines work better and produce more thrust than those used by the Saturn V, which weighing less. If you adjust for inflation, NASA’s present budget is only $3 billion in 1966 dollars, and in fluxuating dollars, has remained static at around $20 billion each year since the 1970s. ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2008, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/57 "2008-03-03T21:44:28Z")
I recently watched a show on the History Channel about sex in Hinduism. The show included footage of the temples mentioned by [Arthur C. Clarke in _I Remember Babylon_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Remember_Babylon). In the story, the man promoting satellite TV shows them as an example of things he will show on his satellite network that can’t be broadcast on regular TV. The same story, incidentally, also predicted TV programming intended to appeal to gays and lesbians. [QUOTE=The New and Improved Superman] This is not _science_ fiction, per se, but it’s amazing to me (in retrospect) how much of mid-20th century SF assumed that the U.S./U.S.S.R. coldwar standoff would still be taking place in the 21st century. Even into the 1980s, when it became clear that the Soviet Union was an unworkable mess of a nation, a lot of the SF presumes that there would be an eastern-communist/western-capitalist superpower standoff in place. [/QUOTE] To be fair, just about nobody predicted the fall of Communism, even when we knew that the Soviet Union was a mess of a nation and that everybody wanted to leave the Communist countries at any cost. When I learned about the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact in seventh grade social studies in 1987, there was no hint that anyone believed that it might not be there anytime soon. It was a shock when it did fall just a few years later. > [@Knorf](#): > > 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. We still have things that work on that client-server model. MMORPGs do, for one example. Until 2000, we had [X terminals](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_terminal) in the astronomy department at UC Santa Cruz, which are a good example of client-server computing. > [@Tuckerfan](#): > > One of the reasons why the first stage was recoverable was because of the launch from KS. It drifted down on parachutes (and killed a cow) We’ve recovered stuff that splashed down in the ocean. All manned American spacecraft prior to the Space Shuttle landed that way, and we managed to recover them. ---
**Author:** ![Talon\_Karrde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Talon\_Karrde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Talon_Karrde)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2008, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/58 "2008-03-03T21:49:57Z")
[QUOTE=Bricker] Orson Scott Card predicted the internet, and influential bloggers, even, in _Ender’s Game_. [/QUOTE] I think they were on usenet, which was already around. The book did have portable computer tablet things with wireless chat, which I’m thinking probably wasn’t around. ---
**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:** [March 3, 2008, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/59 "2008-03-03T21:59:54Z")
> [@](#): > > The earliest known story of TV from the moon is “The Planeteer” (1918) by Homer Eon Flint. Actually, Jules Verne (sort-of in collaboration with his son Michael) already had a TV broadcast from the moon in “La journée d’un journaliste américain en 2890”, published in 1889. It wasn’t the _first_ broadcast from the moon, however, but a routine communication. > **[Jules Verne: Book: La journée d'un journaliste américain en 2890 - ANash](http://www.julesverne.ca/vernebooks/jvbkjournal2890.html)** > > A comprehensive Book listing of one of Jules Verne's titles. All English and French titles are provided, with images of book covers and 1st edition information -Andrew Nash It was published first in English, interestingly, then two years later in French. ---
**Author:** ![BlinkingDuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eada6e/32.png) [@BlinkingDuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlinkingDuck)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2008, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918/60 "2008-03-03T22:36:51Z")
[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] The Puppet Masters, wrote around 1950ish started out with the main character being awakened by his ‘cell phone’ beeping from his jacket pocket…it’s been awhile since I reread it, but I seem to remember him nailing that well. (but I could be mistaken) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-science-fiction-writers-miss-completly/439918.md?page=4)