# What has SF NOT predicted?



## Steve Jordan (Feb 11, 2008)

It was recently brought to my attention that no SF author accurately predicted the live televising of our first Moon landing.  (Supposedly Heinlein predicted it would be possible, but that the equipment would be too heavy to be brought on a Moon mission.)  

It was then suggested that no SF author accurately predicted the reigning-in of our space program after the Moon landings, leaving us with unmanned probes, no lunar settlements, and no further human visitations to any other planets by 2000.

I've done some light research, and as far as I can determine, no SF author predicted the lowly transistor before its discovery at Bell Labs in 1947.  Although its cousin, the semiconductor crystal, was demonstrated as early as 1906, no one made the "quantum leap" beyond the technology of vacuum tubes to solid-state transistors until Bell developed the first device out of numerous studies and patents, some of which had been around for decades. SF stories of incredibly-miniaturized "transistorized" electronics all appear to have come after that.

Does anyone know EITHER of any refutations to the above examples, OR of any other modern developments that were not predicted by SF writers?


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## chrispenycate (Feb 11, 2008)

The reigning in of the space program for different reasons, not just the "well, we've done that, clever, weren't we? now we don't need to do it again" argument occured both in Heinlein's "Blowups happen" (because the technical meansof doing it had become too unsafe) and Blish's "Cities in flight" (because an authoritarian government couldn't allow people to fly out of their infuence)

Transistors (and definitely integrated circuits) might not have been specifically predicted, but some forrm of solid state electronics can be assumed for Asimov's  robots (all right, positronics) and a number of logic devices in "golden age" stories used crystals in their logic (I don't know if that was a hangover from crystal set radios, or just that they were nice and glittery.
Nobody predicted the democretisation of the ENIACs and Leo giant computers, the reduction of size and price that has lead to them getting into everything, or the same thing happening to make televisions cheap enough to watch while you starve to death.
In fact, apart from things that have specifically been invented for a story (Waldo, the slug in the dragon in the sea) most of the predictions have been suficiently imprcise that, like any fortune teller, the author can say "Lasers? I had death rays in my stories decades before.
And authors are still using crystals because they're nice and glittery, and trying to incorporate recent gadgets into their stories so we'll say "Verne, he invented the submarine, he couldn't possibly have known that experiments were going on with prototypes in his own country.
ButI'll admit, when I saw the recent report or the japanese origami reentry vessels I did think "Robor the conqueror".


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## Lith (Feb 12, 2008)

The omnipresence of cellphones and texting.  Communicators don't quite cut it; they're still used too sparingly and seriously.


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## iansales (Feb 12, 2008)

Seems a bit of a pointless argument. Science fiction is not futurism. You might as well ask why techno-thrillers never predicted 911.


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## Steve Jordan (Feb 12, 2008)

chrispenycate said:


> Transistors (and definitely integrated circuits) might not have been specifically predicted, but some forrm of solid state electronics can be assumed for Asimov's  robots (all right, positronics) and a number of logic devices in "golden age" stories used crystals in their logic (I don't know if that was a hangover from crystal set radios, or just that they were nice and glittery.



Yes, it was a reference to crystal radio semiconductors, the sort of cousin to the transistor.  Asimov was deliberately vague about his "positronics," as he was about most of the technology he wrote about (one of the things that make his work so timeless).  All the same, I'm not sure that implies a "prediction" of solid-state electronics based on transistors.  (His play on words to create "positronics" was similar to Star Trek's use of similar words, like "duotronic," "neutronium," and "dilithium" to imply better versions of familiar processes.)

(Edit: Asimov's "I, Robot" was published in 1950.  Bell announced the transistor in 1948.  Although some of Asimov's robot stories may have been written prior to 48, they also had some editing done when compiled into the collection published in 50.  Being interested in science, Asimov may have also been privy to some of the research into solid-state electronics being done at the time.  Where does that put "positronics?"  I honestly don't know.)



chrispenycate said:


> In fact, apart from things that have specifically been invented for a story (Waldo, the slug in the dragon in the sea) most of the predictions have been suficiently imprcise that, like any fortune teller, the author can say "Lasers? I had death rays in my stories decades before.



That's why I was thinking specifically of technological advances/developments that SF authors did NOT guess at before they happened, like the televised Moon landing.  Yes, it's often easy to point to something that happened, like the invention of the laser, and say, "Well, my story had vacuum-tube particle emittor beams, and that's _like_ lasers." But as Lith pointed out, texting on a device designed for voice communication was certainly missed (the omnipresence of cellphones itself, has been suggested by many authors... just not the texting part).

@Ian: No, I wouldn't expect authors to predict something that esoteric.  I'm just talking about the kind of historical events and details that SF authors are known to expend a lot of thought on divining in advance (like flights to the Moon, the Internet, atomic power, life on other planets).  Yes, it's a very nebulous thing.

Another example: I believe no SF author predicted the discovery of life on this planet in some of its most harsh environments, specifically the microorganisms that have been discovered at the edge of sub-oceanic volcanic fissures, with temperatures in the multi-hundreds of degrees, crushing ocean pressure, and highly toxic and corrosive chemical exhausts.  The discovery was hailed by many (notably Arthur C. Clarke) as being strong evidence that life is hearty enough to find purchase in the most harsh environments, and therefore may be more common in the galaxy than we might think.


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## Dave (Feb 12, 2008)

I think that last example is a little different to the others. 

It may be easy to be writer, because you don't need a research budget, and there are no committees that you have to run ideas past, and no shareholders and stakeholders to please, so you are allowed to purely brainstorm, and use any throw-away ideas. However, good inventions, and innovative uses of new technology, they are money-making ideas, and why waste those ideas on a story when you could become the next Bill Gates?

In contrast, I too am surprised that no one predicted the deep ocean micro-organisms you described before they were found. Possibly, it is because alien life seems so much more interesting, that we overlook the wide variety of life that already exists on Earth. If you look closely, in detail, at a spider or a crab, there is nothing more 'alien' when compared to a mammal.


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## Urien (Feb 12, 2008)

Nobody predicted my development of the snorkwrangler.


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## Steve Jordan (Feb 13, 2008)

Dave said:


> I think that last example is a little different to the others...



Yes, it's not a technical idea, but the same principal applies.



Dave said:


> In contrast, I too am surprised that no one predicted the deep ocean micro-organisms you described before they were found. Possibly, it is because alien life seems so much more interesting, that we overlook the wide variety of life that already exists on Earth. If you look closely, in detail, at a spider or a crab, there is nothing more 'alien' when compared to a mammal.



I, myself, have always believed that insects and arachnids are actual alien species, hiding in plain sight among us on Earth... 

(...and _when_ it's proven that _they are_, you can say that I predicted it first!  Ha-_ha_!)


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## RVM45 (Feb 13, 2008)

.....Has any science fiction writer yet predicted that when vacumn tubes truly come of age; that transisters will be but a temporary abberation?

.....It's true, you know.

.....RVM45


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## Sire Of Dragons (Feb 17, 2008)

LOL What the hell is a snork wrangler?  is that anything like a smurf wrangler? HAHA


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## matt-browne-sfw (Mar 1, 2008)

Quantum entanglement


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## Urien (Mar 1, 2008)

SF didn't predict my uncle would explode.


...or that I would have extra strong coffee for breakfast.

Stoopid science fiction writers.


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## Steve Jordan (Mar 1, 2008)

matt-browne-sfw said:


> Quantum entanglement



Ah, yes... there's so much of quantum physics that SF has never managed to work out... primarily, I think, because there's still so much of it that quantum scientists don't even understand.  

Our last 50 years of electronics and integrated circuit designs are based on quantum _theories_, despite the fact that scientists and engineers can't actually agree on specifically what's happening in there... just that the results are consistent and measurable...


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## Toby Frost (Mar 2, 2008)

I think what SF (espeically Gold Age stuff) sometimes doesn't predict is that society can go back as well as forward. Just because time passes doesn't mean either people or technology will get better or even more sane. Twenty years ago, who would have predicted that the main threat to democracy would come from theocratic loonies whose beliefs come straight from the Middle Ages? (Well, maybe Frank Herbert).

The big exception is apocalypses. That said, post-apocalyptic stories are often not directly realistic, but use armageddon as a way of wiping the slate clean to allow major changes to be discussed in the story without other factors intruding.


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## Anatedhrai (Mar 3, 2008)

The Pill.

Well, genre SF did have the excuse that it was generally quite prudish about sex until at least the mid 60s, although Philip José Farmer did break a few taboos the decade before.


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## Lacedaemonian (Mar 3, 2008)

iansales said:


> Seems a bit of a pointless argument. Science fiction is not futurism. You might as well ask why techno-thrillers never predicted 911.



This was predicted.  They never predicted the car crash that iced (one time princess) Diana though.  

Science often tries to capture the human imagination with things we had hoped for in the past.  Scientists try to develop many things that can take many years to come into fruition.  Takes an author five minutes to create those things in their works, especially when they give no indication on how they might work.  When they do try to detail how they work, they just bore us senseless.  I am a great believer in different kinds of people - ie a literary mind and a scientific mind - seems a rare thing that the two combine.


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## Steve Jordan (Mar 3, 2008)

Anatedhrai said:


> The Pill.
> 
> Well, genre SF did have the excuse that it was generally quite prudish about sex until at least the mid 60s, although Philip José Farmer did break a few taboos the decade before.



Hmm... I thought Huxley's _Brave New World_ specified that its Soma drug was a contraceptive, as well as a mood-altering drug.  This, in the 1930s.  (Unless it was added in the 1958 rewrite.  Anyone?)


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## NDHansen-Hill (Apr 8, 2008)

Interesting question, but scientific methods and research are spawning grounds for SF. In order to avoid making SF appear outlandish - at least, those books set in contemporary society - predictions and persuasive arguments would seem to need grounding in reality. I have to agree a little with the poster who suggests SF isn't futurism. It's entertainment. Predictions aren't nearly as important as the way they're manipulated in fiction, to appear "real".

Cheers,
ND


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## John Jarrold (May 13, 2008)

Sigh.  SF is not about prediction.


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## Steve Jordan (May 13, 2008)

John Jarrold said:


> Sigh.  SF is not about prediction.



_No_... but by virtue of the intent of the subject, it tends to speculate on future events on which to base its setting, such as a period when a newly-invented propulsion system has given us flying cars.  It's a fringe benefit.


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## dustinzgirl (May 13, 2008)

I was having a sort of argument with my hubby about something similar. I stated that sci fi has done more for modern science than he thinks, and while we aren't colonizing mars or the moon yet, I believe we could if we weren't so reliant on the concept of money, if Nasa and other nations had unlimited research and development capacity rather than being restricted by the amount of money they receive we would be on the moon by now. Its possible, scientifically, just not doable yet, monetarily.


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## Amalthea (May 13, 2008)

I don't think it predicted epigenetics. I could be wrong. I haven't read every science fiction book out there.


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## Teresa Edgerton (May 14, 2008)

John Jarrold said:


> Sigh.  SF is not about prediction.



No, it's not about prediction, but since much is made of instances when it _has_ made accurate predictions, I think it's interesting to reflect on developments nobody, including SF writers, ever dreamed of ... as well visions of the future that didn't come to pass.  It's not a knock on science fiction, but it does give an idea of what our expectations were, 40, 50, or 60 years ago.

In my youth, most people believed that by the year 2000 practically everyone would be living in towering skyscrapers, driving air cars, waited on by robots, and running their households with wall-sized computers, which would also allow us to press a few buttons and produce a fully cooked dinner of synthesized food.  (No, I'm not just thinking of _The Jetsons._)


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## JoanDrake (Jun 19, 2008)

andrew.v.spencer said:


> Nobody predicted my development of the snorkwrangler.


 
How dare you, I patented the snorkwrangler in 1952, under the pseudonym Tobias P. Augustipas.

It revolutionised the adult dwarf bondage industry.

I'd sue for copyright infringement, but it's since been declared illegal, and it's use a crime against nature, so that seems a little moot.


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## Vladd67 (Jun 25, 2008)

> Seems a bit of a pointless argument. Science fiction is not futurism. You might as well ask why techno-thrillers never predicted 911.


It wasn't predicted perfectly though Tom Clancy did have a Japanese pilot crash a 747, I think, into the Capitol building killing the President and the Government in 1994


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## Interference (Jul 21, 2008)

Science Fiction has failed to predict the political clout weilded by software dog-in-a-manger Microsoft and the unwarranted disrespect for open-source programming and operating systems.  In that sense, yet again, Science Fiction has failed to factor _human greed_ into its conjectures and propositions.



Vladd67 said:


> It wasn't predicted perfectly though Tom Clancy did have a Japanese pilot crash a 747, I think, into the Capitol building killing the President and the Government in 1994



Also in an episode of Lone Gunmen, as noted elsewhere on these boards (I think), there was a terrorist hi-jacking of a plane - but in each of these cases, the writer failed to appreciate the epic grandeur of the assaults which were ultimately made, and the heightened level of disbelief that would still prevail, even this long after the event, allowing conspiracy theorists to theorise about their conspiracies.


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## steve12553 (Jul 27, 2008)

Interference said:


> ..., yet again, Science Fiction has failed to factor _human greed_ into its conjectures and propositions.


 
This is a concept it took me many years to accept and a very large percentage of the Science Fiction community either can't see or for other reason refuse to to accept. Money make the World (Universe) go round. Of all the wonderful things that were predicted by Science Fiction in the last century, look at the ones that came to fruition. Cell Phones (Sell phones),  constanty newer and faster computers and peripheral equipment to surf the net. Devices that require subsciptions and updates and upgrades and replacing. I can hear the Dollar signs constantly. The technology is wonderful but it is driven by money and the glorious worlds of the future that so many writers wrote about just won't happen unless someone can make a profit doing so. (A big profit).


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## Scifi fan (Nov 3, 2008)

I'll tell you what SF has not predicted. That an actor named Ronald Reagan would be president; that, a few years after he launched his nuclear missile and Star Wars program, the leader of the Soviet Union would admit that his side was wrong, and, shortly thereafter, the Berlin Wall would fall, the Warsaw Pact would collapse, and the Western alliance would win the Cold War hands down. 

I'll tell you what else SF has not predicted. That, around that time, the conventional opinion would be that Japan would soon overtake the US in economic military might, but, a few years later, Japan would spiral downhill; that, around that time, the rest of Asia would suffer the same fate - contrary to conventional wisdom.


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## skeptical (Nov 5, 2008)

The one that stands out most for me was electronic miniaturisation.   This has revolutionised 21st Century living, and it was never mentioned before it happened.  Instead, we had stories about giant computers with names that reflected great size.


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## Scifi fan (Nov 8, 2008)

What about treadmills? Or Stairmasters?


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## Ursa major (Nov 8, 2008)

I think the treadmill has been around for some time:
Treadwheel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia​And why oh why has it been renamed the treadwheel? I suspect a dark conspiracy between the powers-that-be (and/or Wikipedia) and the current treadmill industry. (I think we should be told!)


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## shadowbox (Nov 24, 2008)

It's basic what-if theory.  What-if, what-if, what-if.  

There is nothing more to it.


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## Lapuspuer (Nov 24, 2008)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall that none - or at least nearly none - of the stories written before the 1940s had a computer (or some sort of calculating machine) in it. 
Then, as Skeptic has already pointed out, when computer were invented sf imagined their heirs would be bigger instead of smaller.


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## Scifi fan (Nov 29, 2008)

Asimov had a robot story where the humanoid robot did the editing for humans. That story had the professor or writer saying that robots would take the joy and feeling out of literature.

He didn't realize that we would use word processors for writing and editing, and he unfortunately didn't live to see the explosion of writing in its various guises over the internet. He also didn't realize that no artist or writer would denounce the use of computers in their work.


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## Interference (Dec 17, 2008)

... That the earth would one day be ruled entirely by people whose initials are GB.


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