Big mistakes in sf.

[Son of Valhalla]

That has little to do with any authors ability to estimate the march of technology. The fall of the USSR and the rise of personal computers has more to do with why 2001 didn't come true than the pace of technology. Clarke couldn't predict how uninterested we would be in technological development.

Technology in and of itself, while important in science fiction (I wouldn't consider it sci fi unless it had advanced technology) isn't all that makes a sci fi novel. And honestly, Clarke is not that off the mark. It is still extremely difficult to fly to the moon and back, and so him only being twenty years off from the year we may go back isn't as bad as it seems.

 

[RX-79G]

Technology in and of itself, while important in science fiction (I wouldn't consider it sci fi unless it had advanced technology) isn't all that makes a sci fi novel. And honestly, Clarke is not that off the mark. It is still extremely difficult to fly to the moon and back, and so him only being twenty years off from the year we may go back isn't as bad as it seems.

It doesn't. I'm just saying you can't hold an author responsible for being able to accurately prognosticate every trend in technology, science, politics, fashion and religion accurately enough to hold their timeline in lockstep to reality.

Technologically, there is no good reason we couldn't have had a moon base in 1999 and a ship in Jupiter orbit by 2001. We chose not to do those things.

Kubrick and Clarke chose 2001 because it is the first year of the new millennium and near enough in the future that audiences would have a personal relationship with this future that is near enough that they would live to see it themselves.

 

[Son of Valhalla]

It doesn't. I'm just saying you can't hold an author responsible for being able to accurately prognosticate every trend in technology, science, politics, fashion and religion accurately enough to hold their timeline in lockstep to reality.

Technologically, there is no good reason we couldn't have had a moon base in 1999 and a ship in Jupiter orbit by 2001. We chose not to do those things.

Kubrick and Clarke chose 2001 because it is the first year of the new millennium and near enough in the future that audiences would have a personal relationship with this future that is near enough that they would live to see it themselves.

That makes sense.