Review Are Science Fiction Writers Actually Modern Day Prophets?

[Heeeeey]

It seems that science fiction writers have been our modern-day prophets, by not only predicting technology, but explaining things like atoms and how materiality is actually empty space, etc. This, I saw explained in an old b&w film on YouTube.

I was watching a video on YouTube and someone in the comments said that the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey is the same design as the iPhone, so much so that Steve Jobs said he patterned it after the monolith, when in reality, the government has had high-tech for decades but started putting it out little by little so as not to overwhelm the people and make them suspicious about where it was coming from.

Also, I've read that Gene Roddenberry was taken up in a spaceship and told to produce the series Star Trek to get people 'used to the idea' of extraterrestrials.

All these movies and shows supposedly were to 'prepare' the populace for all the technology and eventual revealing by the government about extraterrestrials.

Thoughts?

 

[Doctor Omega]

I think that they are just intelligent and talented men, who are able to look around themselves and extrapolate from where things are obviously heading, then make a mental jump to that likely future. Often getting it wrong, just as much as they get it right.

I don't believe for a second that Gene Rodenberry was taken away by aliens or anything like that.

 

[Gavin]

Most of the good sci-fi writers have been able to extropolate from existing technology but where they tend to miss out is things that aren't obvious. So you get things like space stations in Arthur C. Clarke's work but people still doing calculations using slide rules because computers were beyond the obvious. And in Star Trek there are the communicators (obvious extensions of radios) and computers (which are fairly limited by today's standards because the potential growth in computing ability wasn't so obvious). Even Jules Verne was able to extrapolate existing technology to a submarine powered by electricity, but wasn't able to forsee things like sonar or computers.

 

[ant-mac]

So you get things like space stations in Arthur C. Clarke's work but people still doing calculations using slide rules because computers were beyond the obvious.

HAL 9000?

Apart from the communications satellite - which is probably his most famous prediction - ACC is known for foreshadowing the advent of the personal computer. There is a reason why he was known as the colossus of science fiction.

 

[Doctor Omega]

Also, I've read that Gene Roddenberry was taken up in a spaceship and told to produce the series Star Trek to get people 'used to the idea' of extraterrestrials.

Does this mean that Aliens are indirectly responsible for STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER?






Sigh!

Someone else for Shatner to pass the blame onto again.

 

[Gavin]

HAL 9000?

Apart from the communications satellite - which is probably his most famous prediction - ACC is known for foreshadowing the advent of the personal computer. There is a reason why he was known as the colossus of science fiction.

You're right and I'm a huge fan of ACC. But his foreshadowing of the personal computer was only from the time that computing was beginning to build. He was one of the early ones to predict that they'd become small and cheap enough for personal use. But if you look at his really early work such as Islands in the Sky, he's got communication satellites manned by people using slide rules for basic calculations. And his earlier short stories are much the same. Which isn't unreasonable really because the first real computer was only built in 1946 so by the early 50's they'd only just penetrated public consciousness. And he was absolutely one of the first to realise the potential of computers and build it into his writing. But it doesn't seem that anyone really "predicted" computers in sci-fi writing before they were actually invented. Jules Verne was much the same. He predicted things like submarines, but his prediction was really only an extrapolation of existing technologies.

 

[Doctor Omega]