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Can Science-Fiction Still Predict the Future?
In the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke shows us Dr Heywood Floyd reading his "Newspad", where he can consult any newspaper he wishes. How many future computer engineers read this science fiction classic - or saw the movie - and thought, "I want one of those!"?
As SF fans know, finding examples in earlier fiction that resemble new technology brings a glow of satisfaction at seeing our world foretold. But how has rapid technological development affected such forecasts?
Wondering how scientific advances would shape the future is not a new preoccupation - indeed, rocket propulsion may first have been suggested in a 1657 work by Cyrano de Bergerac, who shoots his hero to the moon with firecrackers. But few have been so enthralled by imaginings of the future as John Claudius Loudon. In the March 1828 issue of Gardener's Magazine, Loudon ran a review of Jane Webb's The Mummy!, a novel about an Egyptian mummy resurrected in the 22nd century. So impressed was Loudon by Webb's steam-powered agricultural machines, air beds, milking machines and smokeless fuel that he arranged an introduction to the young writer; they were later married.
Enthusiasm about such speculation hasn't been universal. For example, Jules Verne's 1863 novel Paris in the Twentieth Century depicted a 1960s world of skyscrapers, fax machines and even a proto-internet. It was turned down by his publisher as "unbelievable", and only finally published in 1994.
By the 20th century, emerging technologies made such ideas more believable. In 1926, the first issue of the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories enthused, "Extravagant Fiction Today..... Cold Fact Tomorrow". In 1928, British newspaper the Daily Mail published an issue forecasting the year 2000 - complete with giant flat-screen televisions in public places.
As time goes by, though, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between science fiction and reality. Perhaps the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card is predicting the "singularity", suggested by writers such as Vernor Vinge and Damien Broderick: the point at which the development of technology becomes so rapid it is impossible to forecast what comes next.
Of course, some have argued that projecting a plausible future is more science than art. Robert A. Heinlein was one of many authors credited with "inventing" the cellphone, which appears in his 1948 novel Space Cadet. Those with an ache to foretell the future may want to take a page out of his book: he maintained that his "prophecies" - which included atomic weapons and remote controls - were not born solely of his imagination, but rooted in his science education and knowledge of current research.
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Personally, I don't believe that sci-fi is about predicting the future, but more about revealing truths on humanity as it is in the here and now, by using new, futuristic, alien, or otherworldly metaphors.
There's more to science fiction than being right or wrong about what the future brings, and there are other genres that take place in the future beyond sci-fi.
I once heard someone say that artists and creative minds are the antennae of the Zeitgeist, and in this case, I believe it to be true.
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