Future Imperfect: Science Fiction and the Future

Future Imperfect: Science Fiction and the Future

• Future: a tense of verbs used when the action is to occur after the time of utterance

• Perfect: denoting a tense of verbs used in describing a an action that has been completed by the subject (from Latin per = through and facere (to do)

• e.g. Science Fiction will have predicted the future.

• Imperfect: denoting a tense of verbs used most commonly in describing continued or repeated past actions.

• e.g. Science Fiction will have been predicting the future.
• Did S.F. predict the future?
• Can it predict it now?
• But first, a safe prediction.

Firstly: what sort of S.F. are we looking at?

But these divisions are a little artificial: e.g.

• "To see far off, and converse in thought with one another" said Gandalf.." each Palantir replied to each, but all those in in Gondor were ever open to the view of Osgiliath...But alone it could do nothing but see small images of things far off"

  Lord of the Rings Tolkien

• is obviously fantasy

• "To see far off, and amplify telepathic impulses" said Gandalf.." each sub-etheric radio communicated with each, but all those in in Gondor were in read-always mode with respect to Osgiliath...But as the quantum linkage failed, it could only work in a low-resolution mode"

Short History of Science Fiction

Prehistory 7th c. BC, 1 cylinder seal, h. 3,9 cm, diam. 1,6 cm, with Enkidu, wearing a short kilt decorated with rosettes, hair and beard in curls, an axe in one hand, holding the tail of the Bull of Heaven in the other, the winged human-headed bull crouches down on its foreleg, in front Gilgamesh, wearing long fringed robe with rosettes, a double horned headdress, long curled hair and beard, holding one of the bull's horns while plunging his sword into its neck." Weblink: Schoyen Collection.

Flatland (First changed Dimension) Abbott 1884

The Golden Age

Amazing Stories (First Sci Fi Magazine) Hugo Gernsback 1926

Astounding John Campbell 1930

War of Worlds (book) Wells(H.G.) 1932

War of Worlds (Broadcast) Welles(Orson) 1938

New Wave

Technology in General

Invention Invented Fluorescent Tubes ~1940 Microfilm ~1930 Skywriting ~1930 T.V. ~1935 Packaging Machines ~1950 Radio Networks ~1935 Plastics ~1900 Vending Machines ~1960 Radar ~1940 Sleep Learning ? Juke Boxes ~1945 Solar Energy ~1970 Hydroponics ? Fibreglass ~1940 Tape recordings ~1920 Nylon ~1930 Loudspeakers ~1925 Antigravity   Night Baseball ~1950 Blasters   Aquacades ??

• While Verne's characters frequently were stiff, Gernsback's characters have less dimension than the pages the novel is printed on. What characterization does occur is laughable, as is Gernsback's take on society. His world of the twenty-seventh century seems particularly naive, with a nebulous world government (which seems to have done away with actual surnames). ..... The best thing that can be said for Gernsback's writing style is that he was in desperate need of an editor and an English grammar. His prose is repetitive and basic. Steven H Silver

Space Travel

• 1619-1655: French writer, around whose name a number of unhistorical legends accumulated.. Adopting the military profession, he fought at Mouzon and at Arras ..
• Cyrano also wrote two novels of imaginary travel: the États et Empires de la Lune (1657) and the Histoire comique des états du Soleil (1662) ....
• Rostand's play made Cyrano's name famous, but aggravated the errors committed by the romantics in emphasizing only the more extravagant aspects of his life and work....
• Like Macbeth and Richard 111, he was more famous for being fictional than real....
• But seriously....

• Date	Science	Author	Book
  1860		Verne	Voyage to the Moon

Hale The Brick Moon 1899 Note Fundraising a major part of the story Brick coating to avoid burn-up in atmosphere Intended to help navigation by making it easier to measure longitude: predecessor of GPS!

Verdict: A

Nuclear ("Atomic") Energy

© Research Machines plc 2006.

Fevrier - N 195, Couverture de Sniffen "Atomic Power Plant"

Verdict: A-

Computers

Verdict: B

Even after invention of computers, SF was using slide rules! Comments: Hardware is always underestimated, software ignored e.g. Starwars S.D.I., 10 million lines code, 30,000 man years also usually seen as one monolithic machine, whereas the evolution is towards very distributed systems.

Time Travel

• Comment:
• If it's in the Ottawa Citizen, it must be true....

Failures

• Faster than light travel
• Telepathy/PSI Phenomena in general:Evidence shaky, if they are useful, why haven't they evolved
• Blasters/Death Rays: Star Wars
• Androids/Robots:       No androids,General purpose Robots seem pointless
• Immortality

Societies

H.G. Wells

• "Shape of things to come"
• "When the sleeper awakes"
• "Food of the Gods"
• "Men like Gods"

• All have superior, enlightened subset of man imposing Utopia on reluctant masses
• Overpopulation -> Disaster controlled by birth control & elimination of unfit (Nazi Germany)
• Disastrous world war followed by scientific elite taking over (US in Japan)

Brave New World (& Revisited)(1935?) Island(1939?) Hallucinogenic Drugs (Valium and LSD, Ritalin) Soma Cloning of Humans -> Designated roles in society

• Player Piano

• Fully automated society, technologists ruled
• -> revolt by "Unemployed workers" (Japan soon?, Now???)

The Space Merchants World dominated by advertising Chicken Little (Super Tomato!)

• Fahrenheit 451

Anthony Burgess Clockwork Orange Randomly Violent Society, Restructuring of mind by drugs (Liverpool, New York...)

Common themes e.g. Harrison Make Room, Make Room (Solyent Green as the movie version) Nolan & Johnson Logan's Run Brunner Stand on Zanzibar The Sheep Look Up Silverberg The Human Hive

The Future of (Predictive) Science Fiction

Science, Society, Technology

SCIENCE

• No Future: Science is too extraordinary and too complicated to be predicted
• e.g. Superstring Theory
• Particles as we know them (Protons, Electrons) are composed of strings in 10 dimensional Space-Time. 6 dimensional are compact -> forces in ordinary space.
• Sakharov suggests that different parts of space could have different dimensionality: e.g. 4-Space, No Time

SOCIETY

No problem: Society cannot be predicted, but aspects can

TECHNOLOGY

10 most influential discoveries/inventions of all time

• Fire
• Domestication of animals
• Metal Smelting
• Agriculture
• Ceramics/Bricks
• Ships
• Moveable Type
• Powered Machinery
• Telephone/Wireless
• Aircraft

Are there any inventions left (ones that matter)

• Communication: Million T.V. Channels by optical fibre
• Cuts cloth for customized suits: So do scissors
• Provides light shows: So do fireworks
• Holograms: We had 3D movies already
• Makes integrated circuits smaller: We had them already
• Makes CD's possible (but we had LP's
• Attaches retinae
• Does nothing fundamentally new, which will modify society

• Since Roman time, transparency has increased by 1 trillion times (Did you notice!!!)
• Shaw Light of Other Days

  Slow glass has refractive index of 10¹⁸, so light travels through it at the speed of 1mm/year.

• "Optical Molasses" effect discovered (1997): various odd materials slow down light to few m/s and allow light to be frozen (2005).
• What will we do with it?

What remains to be discovered?

Acknowledgements

• This is a very personal view of "predictive" Science Fiction. If you disagree, Email Peter Watson and I will steal your ideas!
• Notes at http://www.physics.carleton.ca/~watson/
• A useful source of generic SF info is http://www.sfsite.com/
• The pictures come (largely) from http://www.noosfere.com/showcase/