Science Fiction Predicts The Future

As I have written elsewhere, I am a huge fan of Science Fiction. Good science fiction provides insight into the human condition. It can also provide interesting glimpses into possible futures. Of course it can be really funny to look back at older science fiction and compare their predictions of the future to our real life present. For instance, last time I checked the moon was not rocketed into outer space in 1999, ala Space 1999. The 1968 SciFi show UFO (pronounced YoooFo) was set in 1980, and featured a lunar base where the uniform for women consisted of a silver mini-skirt and a purple wig.

Of course sometimes science fiction gets it (at least partially) right. Popular Mechanics Magazine has an article entitled “The 10 Most Prophetic Sci-Fi Movies Ever”.

Here is the list.

1. Gattaca
2. Minority Report
3. The Road Warrior (Mad Max 2)
4. The Truman Show
5. Destination Moon
6. The Running Man
7. Blade Runner
8. Soylent Green
9. Short Circuit
10. 2001: A Space Odyssey

Gattaca got the number one spot because the issues of genetic profiling and bioethics are with us today and seemingly will only get more complicated. You can read the article to find out why each film made the list. I will comment briefly here about a few of the films.

Destination Moon was made in 1950 and written by my favorite author Robert Heinlein based on his story. It features a film within a film where Woody Woodpecker explains how space flight works.

It is interesting to look at The Running Man and The Truman Show and compare them to today’s reality shows like Survivor and Big Brother.

Speaking of Big Brother, I was in high school in 1984 and at the time it was all the rage to read George Orwell’s novel (written in 1948). The future that Orwell predicted had not come to pass (though approximations did exist in countries like the Soviet Union). Still, that illustrates another benefit of science fiction. It can serve as a warning. But we shouldn’t let our guard down just because the year something was predicted as passed us by. We may not have had a permanent moon base by 1980, but someday we will. Orwell’s Big Brother may have had two-way television surveillance to keep track of people, but today there are computers…