Heh. And people don’t want to believe me when I tell them that not only was Heinlein insane, he was scary insane.
Fun to read, though. He told good stories.
More evidence that the SF writers who said that draconian government policies would be necessary to curb population growth were wrong: China, one of the few countries that actually tried something like this, is re-thinking its “one child” policy. It’s not really needed any more, because
Another thing they got wrong: there have been video phones available for a very long time, but they’ve never caught on.
Actually, one thing he got wrong:
There is something special about a three-way duel in game theory. If you find yourself in a three-way duel where you can fire once per turn, you don’t want to fire. The reason is, you will kill one of your opponents, leaving your other opponent with no choice but to kill you. Three nuclear superpowers may in fact be an unusually stable configuration.
Who got it wrong, were you quoting the critic, or Heinlein?
As I noted way up, writers (and movies) originally depicted television as a method of communication, rather than of entertainment.
While it’s true that some sort of “picture phone” has been around for a long time, it hasn’t been a felicitous experience. It’s been too complex and expensive for most of its history, and now it’s too strobe-like and jerky (as anyone who’s teleconferenced or used two-way webcamming knows). I predict that picturephoning will eventually come into its own when it’s decent quality and cheap.
Jetpacks.
I win.
I guess you could also add flying cars and monochrome jumpsuits into that mix as well.
I agree it’s hilarious - it’s hilarious that someone spent so much time picking though a 1950 magazine article just to prove Heinlein wrong :dubious: Why on earth would you expect him to have a better than average power of prediction?
When he put mobile phones or monocyles or telepathic twins in his stories Heinlein was either set dressing - giving an instant feel that his story is set in the future - or using the as a plot devices. Some of them came to pass, some of them didn’t. No surprise there!
The critic.
Didn’t important messages get sent in sealed capsules? Sorta retro-I recall that you needed a special tool/code to open these capsules. odd device for a culture that could travel between stars!
Really? You’ve never run into a Heinlein fan? You’ve never even read a Heinlein thread here on the Dope?
Heinlein Love is a bigger and more devoted cult than Scientology.
The writers for “Laugh-In” did a “News of the future” that in 1968 or 69 foretold of the breakdown of the Berlin wall. They only missed it by a few months. Scary.
Imagine being taken prisoner by the Klingons, who aren’t going to need much excuse to gouge your ears out anyway 
But you quoted Heinlein.
I am a Heinlein fan 
A fan of his fiction. Yes, I conceed there are “fans” who worship every word he wrote and no doubt expect him to reapear to lead them to salvation, but I still think putting that much effort into disproving the predictions from one article is every bit as obsessive.
I think the bit **Anne Neville ** is pointing to is:
which is the critic’s comment on the Heinlein passage. She’s pointing out there is something special about three blocs
From sheer blind luck, Clarke predicted the surface appearance of Iapetus (a black ring extending into the bright half of the moon, with a black dot at the center) in 2001: A Space Odyssey. I read somewhere that when the pics came in from Voyager 1, the folks at NASA mailed Mr. Clarke some nice prints at his home in Colombo.
ETA: 2001 the book was a voyage to Saturn, not Jupiter like in the movie.
My two primary examples of flaws in old (generally pre-1970, but some later) are;
1> Software. You just built the machine/robot/whatever and turned it on. Without any input, it had knowledge, reason and deduction. No one predicted that the richest man in the world would be the guy who wrote the code.
2> Fuel use. Like someone said earlier, a skyscraper full of explosives just to get to the Moon. Yet every scifi rocket and spaceship even up to recent days seems to be either completely devoid of fuel, or have very little of it.
“Oh, Hi Cal. Just calling to let… oh. I see your on the can. Um… I’ll call back.”