Predictions

posts about #predictions more →
Science Fiction’s Predictions for the Year 2009
The Ancient Maya Predicted Bicycles and VCRs
Six Writers Speculate on Science Fiction's Future
Space Travel Predictions from Look Magazine, 1957
The Video Surveillance Market Is About to Explode!
An Inconvenient Truth—in 1955
Corporate America Predicts the Future at the 1962 Seattle World's Fair
In 1975, Arthur C. Clarke Predicted Flying Cars and Smarter Pets
In the Faraway Tomorrow of 1975, All Women Will Be Babes
Do You Live In A Flu Epidemic Zone?

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Britt Smith
12/31/08

In reply to Science Fiction’s Predictions for the Year 2009
It seems like the older the book/movie is, the crazier the theory.
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tamoko
01/01/09

@Britt Smith: I think that rule generally always holds true... it's unfortunate that alot of the newer books/movies hold so many grains of possibility within them, even if those possibilities are statistically or generally improbable.

I'll be hiding in the basement when the Daleks/RAGE zombies, inter-dimensional viral nano machines start consuming the Earth's outer crust to create their hive ships....
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Meirelle
12/31/08

In reply to Science Fiction’s Predictions for the Year 2009
2009 is also the year Metal Gear Solid 2 takes place. Between that and Cloverfield, I am staying far, far away from New York this year.
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Charax
12/31/08

In reply to Science Fiction’s Predictions for the Year 2009
"The British Government Will Begin Dismantling Public Freedom"

Begin?
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tamoko
01/01/09

I don't remeber any of this shit@Charax: Continue?
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reddingofish
12/31/08

In reply to Science Fiction’s Predictions for the Year 2009
I have always liked stories that say "In the near future" or "This could happen tomorrow" or a story that happens beyond the life time of the person who watches it. Like Star Trek, it starts in some year like 2250 or something like that right? It says the star date but it never told the year that I can remember. Maybe in Enterprise but I never saw all of those. When a writer puts a date on a sci-fi story it really limits it. PK Dick didn't put years on his books did he, not any of the ones that I read. Brin did in Postman and Earth but that was to make a point about how close we were to the situation actually happening.
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Doctor Who?
12/31/08

@reddingofish: Star Trek has fixed dates, though not for every episode. Pavel Chekov being born in 2245, for example, was established in "Who Mourns for Adonis?".
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Torley
12/31/08

@reddingofish: I liked The Sixth Day's "In the not-so-distant future". :)
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gertymac
12/31/08

In reply to Science Fiction’s Predictions for the Year 2009
I am anxiously awaiting the day Who-verse becomes reality.

Remember! Slitheens = vinegar, Sontarans = back of the neck, and Daleks...well, you're fucked.
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Slatz_Grobnik
12/31/08

@gertymac: I know about the windshield wiper things, but what about a hat?
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thedap
12/23/08

In reply to The Ancient Maya Predicted Bicycles and VCRs
to the writer of this article: you are a moron.
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braak
12/23/08

@thedap: Oh, now you've got to explain that one.
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axemen
12/22/08

In reply to The Ancient Maya Predicted Bicycles and VCRs
Where did they find a Mayan Shaman?
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Grey_Area
12/22/08

@axemen: It's not like they all disappeared into another dimension (really, not Atlantis either). Their descendants live all throughout the Yucatan, Belieze, Guatamala, and so on. Many have settled here in my neighborhood and started a new trend in Latino cuisine (Salvadoreno-style tamales are sooo much better than the Northern Mexican ones). A good many of them still follow the old traditions blended with Catholicism. They ain't magic sages, just plain folk. Still, they are probably not above screwing with gullible new-age types for a fast peso.
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Fishypu
12/22/08

@Grey_Area: I think thats a Mayan, but a Mayan Shaman? Thats a burro of a different color. Unless they put some of their shaman magic into those tamales.
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braak
12/23/08

@Fishypu: "Shamanism" is just a kind of religion-spiritual tradition. It doesn't mean they can put down mana stream totems, or whatever, it just means they're initiates into the old religion. It's like being a Houngan or a Witch Doctor or a Priest.
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ParryLost
11/14/08

In reply to Six Writers Speculate on Science Fiction's Future
Ursula K. Le Guin is, quite possibly, God.
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RAHfanboy
11/15/08

@ParryLost: You must be new here. There is no God. They voted on it a few months ago.
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canted
11/14/08

In reply to Six Writers Speculate on Science Fiction's Future
genres are artifice. genre discussion is a trap. more blurring please, as with all else.
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RAHfanboy
11/15/08

@canted: Whoa, Dude! You're so totally, awesomely right on! Labels are so...so...BAD, man, so limiting. Everything is all blurry shades of gray, man. No wait, here come the colors...oh wow dude, the blurry blurry colors...
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Anekanta - Go Play!
11/14/08

In reply to Six Writers Speculate on Science Fiction's Future
I remember seeing a talk by Robert Sawyer [www.tvo.org] about the nature of science fiction.

Not only does he slam George Lucas for watering down the genre (by dismissing it as pure escapism), Sawyer goes on to say that good SF is about issues more than technology.

He compares the work of Jules Verne with that of H.G. Wells. Verne's work was was basically adventure stories designed to showcase very detailed explanations of science and technology. H.G. Wells' stories were more social commentaries with fantastic technology as a backdrop or plot device.

Verne often criticized Wells as not being scientific enough in his work. But Sawyer notes that over a hundred years later, far more people read H.G. Wells than Jules Verne--because, as Usula LeGuin said above, it's the human relationships that are most important to a good story. Those relationships may be altered by science & technology, but the science itself is less important than the people dealing with it.

As long as there are human beings concerned with progress and social change, there will be SF in one form or another.
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RAHfanboy
11/15/08

@Anekanta: I would think if you like Sci-Fi from that period, you'd read Wells AND Verne. If you don't like it, you'd read neither.
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TitusLadon
11/14/08

In reply to Six Writers Speculate on Science Fiction's Future
The death of science fiction is the death of the human imagination. I'm dissappointed that Stross thinks that's already happened.
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RAHfanboy
11/15/08

@TitusLadon: Maybe his is dead? Or does he mean everybody's but his?
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MonkeyT
11/14/08

In reply to Six Writers Speculate on Science Fiction's Future
The biggest problem is that, for a long time, SF had the advantage of a central plot device that everyday folk could easily comprehend: the rocket ship. "Like a boat, but for space/time". It was exotic, but still very very familiar. Science advancements now are less concrete - concepts as big as galaxies or as small as atoms, None of which are as simple to grasp (as a plot device) as "a box that takes you somewhere/when very different than here." Now, rockets are old hat, and the newest science is largely removed from what we can see with our naked eyes, mostly due to differences in scale.
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RAHfanboy
11/15/08

@MonkeyT: Rockets aren't just old hat, they're pretty useless to go anywhere or do anything really interesting in a modern Sci-Fi sense. We're finding this out in the present with the horrible stagnation of our space program. Most Sci-Fi had dispensed with rockets 40-50 years ago.
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BadUncle
11/14/08

In reply to Six Writers Speculate on Science Fiction's Future
A focus on technology is a dead end. Science fiction is a great lens for examining society and interpersonal relations. Jules Vernes' adventure stories had legs long after submarines and aerial travel were common place. And Neal Stephenson's future fiction is hilarious and compelling whether or not any of it comes to pass.
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goldfarb
11/14/08

In reply to Six Writers Speculate on Science Fiction's Future
in 30+ years of reading science fiction I've never thought of it as having anything to do with Science, which is a process not a 'thing'...the overwhelming majority of science fiction hasn't even attempted to predict anything to do with science or technology - instead it's used science what-if's and technology what-if's to build the environments, the settings, the textures of the worlds in which it's stories take place...
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NefariousNewt
11/14/08

In reply to Six Writers Speculate on Science Fiction's Future
How can science fiction die? Science has only scratched the surface of the workings of an infinite universe. It's not like science fiction writers are running out of story ideas!

Prognosticating on the future of science fiction is a waste of time. Science fiction will exists as long as there are questions to be answered and alternate paths through space-time to take.
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