Predicting the future is hard, and science fiction is no exception: all the predictions that we'd have been to Mars and have bases on the Moon by now were wrong, but advances in electronic media have mostly exceeded expectations. So I was wondering what works of science fiction have done the best job predicting the future. I nominate John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar, which was written in 1968 and takes place in, yes, 2010. In the story, China has overtaken the Soviet Union as America's main competitor, newspapers are declining and moving their content into other media, and people have digital avatars of themselves for entertainment, to name a few examples.
Most prescient works of science fiction
- Thread starter TalkieToaster
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One TV series I'd nominate is Star Cops.
Its depiction of 2027 with five major space stations, lots of independent small research station, plus a Moonbase and a small Mars base is obviously wrong now, but still valid as a possibility for 40 years time (the series was made in 1987).
But the big thing it got right was Box - a pocket computer that can act as a phone, access information anywhere in the world, and even predict what flights, books or hotel bookings you might like to make.
The slip is that Star Cops depicts Box as an expensive rarity in 2027, whereas here in 2010...
Its depiction of 2027 with five major space stations, lots of independent small research station, plus a Moonbase and a small Mars base is obviously wrong now, but still valid as a possibility for 40 years time (the series was made in 1987).
But the big thing it got right was Box - a pocket computer that can act as a phone, access information anywhere in the world, and even predict what flights, books or hotel bookings you might like to make.
The slip is that Star Cops depicts Box as an expensive rarity in 2027, whereas here in 2010...
Fahrenheit 451 for the accurate prediction of "reality TV" and its dumbening effect on viewers. 
Robert J. Sawyer's novel FlashForward (published in 1999) features a Pope Benedict XVI. in the then-future year of 2009. You can't get more accurate than that.
Robert J. Sawyer's novel FlashForward (published in 1999) features a Pope Benedict XVI. in the then-future year of 2009. You can't get more accurate than that.
"A Logic Named Joe" by Will F. Jenkins predicted home computers and the Internet in 1946. And they weren't portrayed as expensive rarities, either.
I don't know if this counts... but I'd offer up: "By the Waters of Babylon", a short story by Stephen Vincent Benet...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/By_the_Waters_of_Babylon
After I read it as a teen, I was shocked to discover it was written before nuclear bombs were invented, before WWII. Which, by our standards would make "it" science fiction when it was written, although technically science "fact" in our post nuclear world of the last 60 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/By_the_Waters_of_Babylon
After I read it as a teen, I was shocked to discover it was written before nuclear bombs were invented, before WWII. Which, by our standards would make "it" science fiction when it was written, although technically science "fact" in our post nuclear world of the last 60 years.
"The Machine Stops" by E. M. Forester. Written in 1926 about people who never interact with others in person because they have streaming video.
Ray Bradbury's short story "The Murderer", which depicts a society in which people have become so attached to cell phones and other forms of connectivity that original thought is all but impossible.
H.G. Wells beat him to nukes in fiction by twenty-three years.
Did anyone saying BNW or 1984 look out a window beforehand?
I mean, if's a Brave New World, I want my soma, my fornication, my world state, and my job.
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I can't really think offhand of any truly prescient science fiction, in that it remotely accurately predicted the world of 2010. But I'm not surprised; who would want to write about a place so boring?
I mean, if's a Brave New World, I want my soma, my fornication, my world state, and my job.
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I can't really think offhand of any truly prescient science fiction, in that it remotely accurately predicted the world of 2010. But I'm not surprised; who would want to write about a place so boring?
Only one person said it.
Nardpuncher
Rear Admiral
Fahrenheit 451 for the accurate prediction of "reality TV" and its dumbening effect on viewers.
Robert J. Sawyer's novel FlashForward (published in 1999) features a Pope Benedict XVI. in the then-future year of 2009. You can't get more accurate than that.
With me having absolutely no knowledge of how it works, I'll wager that the names that popes are given is decided long beforehand and that someone could look it up easily on the Vatican's website.
Each pope picks his own name after he is elected.
To quote from Wikipedia:
Basically, Robert J. Sawyer made a lucky guess in 1999. Benedict is also one of seven papal names which have been used more than ten times so far (the other being John, Gregory, Clement, Innocent, Leo, and Pius). So much about the odds.
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Nardpuncher
Rear Admiral
OK then. That is pretty neat and I apologize if I sounded jerky.
Pope Innocent? Pope Pius? Pope Clement? Did George Lucas help name these guys?
Soylent Green talks about global warming
Arthur C Clarke's The Ghost from the Grand Banks in 1990 was the first mention I ever heard about the Y2K bug, and the book also makes reference to smoking being banned and even to cigerettes being digitally removed from old movies which I think is has happened, or has been talked about (and obviously Spielberg did it with guns in ET)
Arthur C Clarke's The Ghost from the Grand Banks in 1990 was the first mention I ever heard about the Y2K bug, and the book also makes reference to smoking being banned and even to cigerettes being digitally removed from old movies which I think is has happened, or has been talked about (and obviously Spielberg did it with guns in ET)
The Door Into Summer by Heinlein predicted ATMs, robot cleaning machines, water beds...in fact, best as can be determined, RAH invented water beds just as Clarke invented communication sats.
Clarke invented, or at least talked about, PDAs with computer interfaces in Imperial Earth. What he described sounded like Iphone/Ipad type devices.
I guess someone should mention Star Trek, too. There's already a "tricorder" Mark I available on the market, and the Navy has built diagnostic beds, JPL has Ion-pulse engines on the drawing board in California and hand-held "communicators" are common place.
Clarke invented, or at least talked about, PDAs with computer interfaces in Imperial Earth. What he described sounded like Iphone/Ipad type devices.
I guess someone should mention Star Trek, too. There's already a "tricorder" Mark I available on the market, and the Navy has built diagnostic beds, JPL has Ion-pulse engines on the drawing board in California and hand-held "communicators" are common place.
