Younger people may have trouble appreciating this, but I can remember when years like 2001 seemed like way-off times in “the future.” I recently read The Puppet Masters, which Heinlein wrote about 1950. He set the story in that mysterious, far-future year 2007, where people use cell phones and display liberal sexual mores, so those aspects didn’t challenge my suspension of disbelief. He also seems to have anticipated the security paranoia of the last decade about terrorism. But he didn’t get much else right.
However, you have to hand it to the last century’s science fiction writers despite their bad calls. They often showed men, mostly, who got off their asses and did stuff in the real world, like building moon colonies, exploring exoplanets, fighting wars with alien races and such. For the most part they didn’t anticipate the lassitude and vulgar hedonism which characterizes American life in the real 21st Century.
I’ve started to wonder lately if science fiction’s fondness for neo-feudal social structures, noble houses, monarchies and the like postulated for future societies will seem prescient if it turns out that the democracy bubble has started to collapse in our lifetimes.
Yeah, I can remember when I had trouble believing I was living in the nineties—surely they were flimsy imaginary years, not years which could be part of the real world.
The Door into Summer is probably the best sf novel for predicting devices, and it’s got my favorite piece of general prediction. When the main character wakes up in the future, he doesn’t have any way to guess what many of the job descriptions refer to.
I don’t know what you mean by vulgar hedonism. To my mind, both the toys and the food have been improving, and I’m glad of it. Low end art is pretty awful, but the world may have always been like that. There’s still high end art being made, both popular and fringe. There’s more permission to portray sex and violence, but less permission to engage in casual bigotry. I’m not sure this is a change for the worse. (Strange but true: sf fans, at least seem most likely to skim sex scenes, action scenes, and description).
As for golden age sf which predicts society going downhill, I recommend PK Dick, and especially Kornbluth.
I do think things are going wrong, but I don’t think lassitude is a good explanation. Instead it’s energetic people who’ve found ways to skim value without doing anything useful.
Younger people may have trouble appreciating this, but I can remember when years like 2001 seemed like way-off times in “the future.” I recently read The Puppet Masters, which Heinlein wrote about 1950. He set the story in that mysterious, far-future year 2007, where people use cell phones and display liberal sexual mores, so those aspects didn’t challenge my suspension of disbelief. He also seems to have anticipated the security paranoia of the last decade about terrorism. But he didn’t get much else right.
However, you have to hand it to the last century’s science fiction writers despite their bad calls. They often showed men, mostly, who got off their asses and did stuff in the real world, like building moon colonies, exploring exoplanets, fighting wars with alien races and such. For the most part they didn’t anticipate the lassitude and vulgar hedonism which characterizes American life in the real 21st Century.
I’ve started to wonder lately if science fiction’s fondness for neo-feudal social structures, noble houses, monarchies and the like postulated for future societies will seem prescient if it turns out that the democracy bubble has started to collapse in our lifetimes.
Yeah, I can remember when I had trouble believing I was living in the nineties—surely they were flimsy imaginary years, not years which could be part of the real world.
The Door into Summer is probably the best sf novel for predicting devices, and it’s got my favorite piece of general prediction. When the main character wakes up in the future, he doesn’t have any way to guess what many of the job descriptions refer to.
I don’t know what you mean by vulgar hedonism. To my mind, both the toys and the food have been improving, and I’m glad of it. Low end art is pretty awful, but the world may have always been like that. There’s still high end art being made, both popular and fringe. There’s more permission to portray sex and violence, but less permission to engage in casual bigotry. I’m not sure this is a change for the worse. (Strange but true: sf fans, at least seem most likely to skim sex scenes, action scenes, and description).
As for golden age sf which predicts society going downhill, I recommend PK Dick, and especially Kornbluth.
I do think things are going wrong, but I don’t think lassitude is a good explanation. Instead it’s energetic people who’ve found ways to skim value without doing anything useful.