Do you think that science fiction authors were right about future?

Question

I mean do you think their predictions have come true? And why it happened so? What is the most exact prediction?

Answer 1

Yes, many predictions of sci-fi came true.
A good example is the first trip to the moon,
predicted by Jules Verne.

Answer 2

My favorite story on this topic was written long ago about the future of super-computers. The story had it that they failed because it would not be practical to keep changing the failed vacuum tubes that ran it! Of course, that was written before the invention of the silicon chip.

Science fiction writers do get some things right, and sometimes even get credit for it. I believe it was Arthur C. Clarke who was credited with thinking up the geosynchronous communication satellites, which we currently do have, that keep us from ever having to be out of contact with the satellites by the way they are positioned in their orbits to hang over a particular spot on the earth's surface. It's all just very careful mathematics, of course, which could be worked out long before the technology to launch such a satellite had been developed.

Remember HAL 9000? Also imagined by Arthur C. Clarke. Remember the huge space it took up on the ship? The one thing science fiction writers did not seem to have prophesied very well is the tiny, tiny size of the components of modern computers, and therefore their amazing speed and storage capacity. That, of course, has had a profound effect on everything technological ever since. Who could have imagined that I could carry a gigabyte of memory in my purse in a little doodad smaller than most lipsticks?

Answer 3

We could write a book about the predictions of Sci Fi writers that came to be. Here are very few: Nuclear Powered Submarine; Wireless Communication; Travel to the Moon; Organ Transplants; MicroChips; Robots; Telemetry; Anti Matter; Ultra Sound.

I could go on and on but you get the idea.

Answer 4

Everything that sci-fi authors' write about comes true about 70% of the time and that is a fact. Look at Jules Verne. When he wrote about a submarine that travelled under the seas, there were no submarines. Leonardo postulated and drew pictures of submarines and planes and other things that were not invented for hundreds of years. Sci-fi authors' tend to think outside of the box and yet as time passes a lot of their works are becoming true even as we speak.

Answer 5

I think they often shape the future.
We see doors automatically open on Star Trek and want that too.
Same with instant communication.

Having a vision for the future can be good and bad. That Tom Cruise movie where the store recognizes him and tells him shirts are on sale is pretty darn Orwellian.

Big Brother IS watching, lol. They say the average Londoner who walks to work is photographed by 300 different security cameras.

Answer 6

Here is a link to a site that list a lot of inventions that were first "predicted" by Science fiction aurthors:

http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/ctnlistalpha.asp

Answer 7

The minds of the early science-fiction writers were imaginative and the inventors of the time were unknowingly helping society to improve and advance.

Perhaps the writers and the inventors held some creative thoughts for the future.

Answer 8

George Orwell predicted Big Brother would happen in 1984, twenty two years later and we do have CCTV everywhere!

Answer 9

I find sci-fi predictions fascinating - although I find the inventions of Leonardo Di Vinci even more fascinating.

He conceived of ideas vastly ahead of his own time, notably conceptually inventing the helicopter, a tank, the use of concentrated solar power, the calculator, a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics, the double hull, and many others. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were feasible during his lifetime; modern scientific approaches to metallurgy and engineering were only in their infancy during the Renaissance. In addition, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy, astronomy, civil engineering, optics, and the study of water (hydrodynamics). Of his works, only a few paintings survive, together with his notebooks (scattered among various collections) containing drawings, scientific diagrams and notes.


Fascinated by the phenomenon of flight, Leonardo produced detailed studies of the flight of birds, and plans for several flying machines, including a helicopter powered by four men (which would not have worked since the body of the craft would have rotated) and a light hang glider which could have flown. [2] On January 3, 1496 he unsuccessfully tested a flying machine he had constructed.
The interior of Leonardo da Vinci's armoured tank
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The interior of Leonardo da Vinci's armoured tank

In 1502, Leonardo da Vinci produced a drawing of a single span 720-foot (240 m) bridge as part of a civil engineering project for Sultan Beyazid II of Constantinople. The bridge was intended to span an inlet at the mouth of the Bosphorus known as the Golden Horn. Beyazid did not pursue the project, because he believed that such a construction was impossible. Leonardo's vision was resurrected in 2001 when a smaller bridge based on his design was constructed in Norway. In May 2006, the Turkish government decided to construct Leonardo's bridge. It is expected to be finished by October 2006.

In 1490, he made a sketch that conceptualized a stepless continuously variable transmission (CVT). [6] Modern variations of Leonardo's transmission concept are being used in some automobiles produced today. [7] Continuously variable transmissions have been available in tractors, snowmobiles, and motorscooters for many years.

Owing to his employment as a military engineer, his notebooks also contain several designs for military machines: machine guns, an armoured tank powered by humans or horses, cluster bombs, a working parachute, a diving suit made out of pig's leather and a hose connecting to air, etc. even though he later held war to be the worst of human activities. Other inventions include a submarine, a cog-wheeled device that has been interpreted as the first mechanical calculator, and one of the first programmable robots that has been misinterpreted as a car powered by a spring mechanism. In his years in the Vatican, he planned an industrial use of solar power, by employing concave mirrors to heat water. While most of Leonardo's inventions were not built during his lifetime, models of many of them have been constructed with the support of IBM and are on display at the Leonardo da Vinci Museum at the Château du Clos Lucé in Amboise[8].

Answer 10

hmmm....i think some things might be true. Like flying cars and stuff like that. And some of the future weapondry. thats pretty cool. Not sure about all of the predictions tho...