The Prophets of Science Fiction

When I was young, back in the 1960s and 1970s, Science Fiction was still often looked down on as not being serious literature. I remember any number of times when someone would see me reading a Science Fiction novel and tell me that I needed to be more serious in my reading or I would never amount to anything.

I remember that I would always respond with something like, “Yeah, you watch! A lot of the stuff that’s written about in Science Fiction will come true some day!” Now, it gives me great pleasure to say, “I told you so!”

Many of the things that were envisioned by Science Fiction writers in the earlier parts of the Twentieth Century became reality within decades of the time they were written about. Some of them were even the inspiration for the inventions that came later. Let’s look at some prominent examples.

Arthur C. Clark

Arthur C. Clark, courtesy of arthurcclark.org

In 1945, Mr. Clark proposed the idea of a satellite communications system. His initial idea was to place three space stations in geosynchronous orbit at the points of an equilateral triangle in order to communicate to any point on the Earth.

Today there are well over a hundred satellites in geosynchronous orbit above our planet. They are used for everything from encrypted radio communications, satellite phones, GPS, satellite TV, and probably a few things we don’t know about because they’re classified.

Arthur C. Clark & Stanley Kubrik

Arthur C. Clark and Stanley Kubrik, courtesy of archives hub

In their 1968 film masterpiece (and the novel written from it by Mr. Clark), ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ there were several ideas and concepts that were created for the screen that later came true, or are on the verge of coming true.

• Tablet Computers — several scenes in the movie showed the characters using something called a ‘Newspad’ — a flat device with a video screen which was used to read news, documents, and view videos from home. This predated the first iPad by decades.
• Artificial Intelligence — the movie featured a computer on the Jupiter spaceship called the HAL 9000 that attained self-awareness and was true artificial intelligence. While what we call AI now isn’t true artificial intelligence since it isn’t yet self-aware (although it can mimic it), that may not be too far in the future at the rate computers are advancing.

Victor Appleton

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While Victor may not be as well known as some other authors, he created a series of books for young adults featuring an 18 year old scientific genius named Tom Swift who came up with all sorts of inventions while also becoming involved in mysteries and espionage. I devoured the books when I was a tender young lad. In his 1911 novel ‘Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle’, Appleton envisioned a weapon that used electroshock to stun a person. The inventors of the TASER stun weapon cite this novel as the inspiration for their weapon. In fact, TASER is actually an anagram which stands for ‘Thomas A. Swift’s Electric Rifle’. So, the TASER even takes its name from the early novel.

Dean Koontz

Dean Koontz, courtesy of deankoontz.com

In his 1973 novel ‘Demon Seed’, Mr. Koontz introduced the concept of a smart home with advanced automation and AI. The concept of automated and interconnected devices is now reality with smart home technology. We even have devices that accept spoken requests to activate devices, turn lights on and off, even start the coffee maker in the morning.

Robert A. Heinlein

Robert A. Heinlein, courtesy of picryl

Robert A. Heinlein has carried the title ‘The Dean of American Science Fiction’ for over fifty years. This may be one of the reasons for that title. Mr. Heinlein has been credited with the creation of the concepts for over one hundred different inventions that later came true. Here are some of his more famous ones.

• In his 1961 novel, ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’, Heinlein described a waterbed in such detail that when Charles Hall tried to patent his own invention of the waterbed, he was refused a patent because Heinlein’s descriptions in ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’ and an earlier novel, ‘Double Star’ released in 1956 constituted prior art.
• In his 1965 novel, ‘The Moon is a Harsh Mistress’, Heinlein advanced the concept of a computer that ‘accidentally’ became self aware. In the same novel, the computer, named Mike, created a human avatar of itself named Adam Selene through which he could communicate with humans without them finding out he was a computer. In this novel, Heinlein also gives one of the earliest descriptions that I know about of Kinetic Energy Weapons which were used by citizens on the moon to fight a war with Earth.
• In ‘Podkayne of Mars’ Heinlein introduced the concept of a ‘delivery robot’ — a small autonomous device that delivers goods directly to a location. Amazon has been floating the idea of autonomous drones that would do exactly this.
• In ‘Assignment in Eternity’, released in 1953, Heinlein introduced the ‘pocket phone’, a phone not hardwired to anything that’s small enough to carry in your pocket. Sound familiar?
• In ‘The Star Beast’ of 1954, the ‘Reading Plate’, a flat screen that presented computer output for reading.
• In the 1942 ‘Beyond This Horizon’, the Slideway. The Slideway is a moving sidewalk or walkway that moves people forward. Have you been to any large airports lately?
• In the 1940 short story, ‘The Roads Must Roll’, the Solar Reception Screen which was described as a device for turning sunlight into electricity. We have entire solar farms of such screens today.

These are just five Science Fiction authors, all of whom began their careers in the early to mid Twentieth Century. Were they seers that they were able to predict so many future gadgets and inventions so accurately? Were they geniuses on the level of Leonardo DaVinci? Or were they writers with incredible imaginations that allowed them to speculate, from their current technology, what it could lead to? You be the judge.

Now, a homework assignment for you, the reader. See what inventions you can think up that might become reality in the next half century. Write them down and put them somewhere that they won’t get lost. Then, pull them out about once a decade and see how accurate you’ve been.

Talking with Tan