Add the short story “We Also Walk Dogs” to the Heinlein list of stories with cell phones.
One of the things I love, is that he just takes the idea and runs with it. A female character takes her phone out of her pocket, makes a phone call, then puts it back.
Exactly right. In fact Isaac Asimov, speaking for SF writers galore, moaned, “That’s the one thing we all missed!”
Or words to that effect.
If you want to check out when inventions first appeared in SF check out Technovelgy.com. They have Space Cadet as one of the earliest examples of a “cell phone”.
Getting back to the OP I think one thing that was totally missed - and it relates to Lemur866’s earlier posts - was the goverment funded space programme. Most pre-1960s SF assumed it would be like aviation with individuals and companies leading the way. Of course there is the argument that if it had been done that way - or by the military - (anyone but NASA :dubious: ) we would had had proper re-usable space ships. As I understand it Single Stage to Orbit is by no means technically impossible, we just haven’t done it yet. Certainly Two Stage to Orbit with a fully recoverable first stage will be possible.
I have no cite, but I think most SF writers assumed by now reciprocating piston engines would be replaced by gas turbines in cars.
Heinlein’s Between Planets has the main character answering his phone while out riding a horse.
Bear in mind that most science fiction writers are not actually making any attempt to predict the future. They are mostly just incorporating “futuristic” elements as part of the scene setting, with a strong element of “if this particular social/technological change were to happen, what would be some intriguing and story-worthy effects resulting from it” rather than “I think this will happen”.
One big one a lot of them missed is the demographic transition. A number of SF stories I’ve read have some government-imposed limit on the number of children a person or couple is allowed to have. China has that now, but the demographic transition and the availability of effective birth control solved that problem in most of the developed world with no government intervention required. In fact, it arguably solved it too well in some advanced societies, such as Japan, which are now dealing with issues of having too many old people relative to the number of young people.
That of course ties into their missing Women’s Liberation- women’s employment opportunities are one of the factors that go into the demographic transition.
Irony piled on irony. The Chinese government now feels that it has to censor the internet to keep out (among other things) the porn that we’re sending them.
You could easily find some people who think there are ill effects. You may agree or disagree with them, but there are people who have that opinion.
That was a respectable scientific opinion at the time, assuming these stories were written before 1962. That’s when we sent Mariner 2 to Venus and learned that the surface is too hot for swamps or intelligent life as we know it.
Isaac Asimov’s story The Dying Night makes a similar mistake that is understandable for its time (the story was written in 1956)- the story hinges on the idea that Mercury is tidally locked to the Sun. We learned in 1965 that that isn’t true. Asimov actually insisted that a postscript saying that Mercury’s rotation isn’t tidally locked to the Sun be printed with every reprinting of The Dying Night done after the discovery.
Another Asimov story, The Dust of Death, hinges on the then-current idea that the atmosphere of Titan was made up of hydrogen and methane. We discovered in 2005 that Titan’s atmosphere is 98.4% nitrogen and 1.6% methane.
Lester Dent, the main author of the Doc Savage pulp stories, predicted the radio-controlled garage door opener.
Not world-changing but heck, I use mine every day!
John Jones’s Dollar, written in 1914, has people going to school via Visaphone. The students can see and hear the professor, and he can see and hear them. Sounds a fair bit like an online class (with a webcam setup for each student) to me.
But science fiction authors usually try to pick some social or technological change that is plausible. They don’t write stories about “what if gravity suddenly ceased to exist” or “what if magic really worked” (if they do, they’re not generally considered science fiction).
Dies the Fire by SM Stirling is of that ilk… the premise / cause of the story is so ludicrous it is a fantasy, not science fiction. He basically sets up a scenario where the Society for Creative Anachronisms gets to take over the world.
It’s unfortunate because I like some of his other books. But I just don’t go for fantasy much - I prefer hard science fiction.
Let me clarify the Clarke chinese pornography story.
The Chinese put up satelite TV transmitters. They plan to produce pornography, but laced with Marxist propaganda. So when everyone tunes in to watch the porn, they get indoctrinated with Marxism. And eventually they’ll be able to take over the West without firing a shot.
One character objects that, well, we could produce our own western pornography that didn’t have Marxist propaganda. And the Chinese adversary laughs and says that the religious nutjobs that control America wouldn’t allow it. Hypocritical America would never allow home-grown porn, but people wouldn’t be able to stop watching the satelite porn.
Funny, the religious puritans are arguable much more powerful today than they were back in the 50s, and they’re just as opposed to the porn, except there’s porn everywhere.
One more thing about the demographics. Heinlein was especially wrong about this. His future societies invariably have severe overpopulation, except when there’s a technology that allows space colonization.
“Farmer in the Sky” especially had some weird projections. Earth’s population has grown immensely, food is strictly rationed, so tightly that selling food is a crime. Except, they have total conversion power. Unlimited energy. How does that square with severely restricted food production? With unlimited energy, agriculture can be treated as an industrial process.
Heinlein fell in love with the paradoxical notion of a wealthy yet hungry future. But wealthy people can afford to spend lots of money producing extra food, it’s not like there’s only so much food to go around, food production can be increased. The idea of hungry rich people was provacative, but it just doesn’t make sense.
This gentleman has a hilarious look at Heinlein’s predictions.
Just a thought- was it widely known in 1960 that Communist societies are at least as willing to impose censorship and to have a puritanical streak as religious nutjobs in the West are? I know there was a tendency among liberals in the West in the 1920s and 30s to take Soviet avowals that their country had freedom of speech at face value. By the 80s, though, pretty much everybody but the left-wing nuts knew that the Soviet Union and communist China did heavily censor what their people could see. When did that transition take place?
I believe that was Clarke
Even though something like the internet technically existed in 1985, Card still envisioned it as becoming a household staple more significant than television, he called it “The web,” and he envisioned public opinion being shaped by bloggers. I think what he imagined was far enough removed from what existed at the time that he should get credit for nailing something.
He also predicted laptops (though he called them “desks”) and wireless internet technologies.
I think he came closer to predicting how computer and internet technology would affect future culture than anyone else did.
He basically described the blogosphere before anyone knew there’d be blogs. Very impressive. He also described video games – not just technologically, but how they look and feel.
He himself says he just kind of got lucky.
You raise interesting points, Giles, and I’d like to elaborate on them.
I wanted to discuss the ability of a device such as a phone to perform more than one function because of the use of microprocessors in so many devices today.
Of course, the device most people were talking up recently was the iPhone, but even my Samsung AT&T phone can function as a veritable electronic Swiss army knife that would have made James Bond drool with envy. It not only sends and receives phone calls, it
[ul]
[li]takes and displays still photos[/li][li]shoots and plays back video[/li][li]sends and receives text messages and instant messages[/li][li]has a voice recorder[/li][li]has a calendar that reminds me of appointments and keeps me on schedule[/li][li]calculates and performs metric conversions[/li][li]has an internet browser[/li][li]can send and receive email[/li][li]plays games[/li][li]can play video on demand, including YouTube videos[/li][li]plays music[/li][li]has the ability to act as a television and radio (with MobiTV), although I’m not in a strong enough signal area to make it worth subscribing to.[/li][/ul]
And it’s not even a Palm or pocket PC, and at about $80, accessible to the average consumer.
Granted, there are better cameras, MP3 players, gaming devices, etc., and the demand for the integration of so many functions in one device is more market-driven than by consumer demand, but SF seems to have missed on the ability of the average Joe to carry one device around that carries so many other gadgets within it.
Satellites, even geosynchronous ones, LONG predate Clarke and Heinlein. You can find them in 19th century works. The first story about using a geosynchronous satellite for navigation purposes is Edward Everett Hale’s The Brick Moon from 1869
In the sequel, he has people living in the Brick Moon. The moon is brick, by the way, so that it wouldn’t burn up on being launched – refravctory materials, just like the Space Shuittle Tiles.
The scenery? 
And if you hit much in Kansas, who’s gonna mind?