In our latest episode on Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling, the science fiction icon mused on the genre’s particular ability to imagine, and maybe even predict, the future.
“People talk about science fiction being very far out, very wild. I don’t think it’s any of these things. Everything we see in the way of space travel, space concept, scientific advancement, medical discoveries, was already predicted by good science fiction twenty-five years ago.”
Rod Serling, Twilight Zone Prophet
Serling was a vocal critic of censorship and corporate intervention, both of which ran rampant during TV’s first Golden Age. He was also a WWII vet who had been deeply scarred by what he saw during his service.
He brought all this to the world of Twilight Zone, using the show to explore ideas about government intervention, surveillance, unchecked power, and fear. Over-reliance on technology often served as a cautionary tale in the show. In today’s age of drone warfare, government surveillance, and on-demand everything, many episodes of the Twilight Zone feel surprisingly modern and prescient.
A Siri-like computer takes on a mind of its’ own, starts giving its’ operator advice on his love life.
Predictions that came true:
- Artificial Intelligence, possibly the movie Her
A man automates his factory with a robotic workforce, only to find that he is now obsolete as well.
Predictions that came true:
- Automation, the displacement of many manufacturing and service industry workers
More on Serling’s amazingly accurate depiction of the future in the Twilight Zone
Foreseeing the Future of Space Travel
Serling, Issac Asimov, Frederik Pohl, and John R. Pierce on ABC during coverage of the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, discussing how early they predicted a man on the moon in their own writing.
Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward
Credit: Wikipedia/Houghton Mifflin
Written in 1888, Looking Backward depicts life in the year 2000. In Bellamy’s future depiction, the U.S. has adopted a system similar to socialism through which society has reached a state of egalitarianism. Labor and its’ profits are shared equally among all citizens in an industrial society; there is universal healthcare and free education through the university level, after which they enter the workforce until age 45, when they can retire. Equal wages are distributed through cards similar to debit cards. Everyone receives enough to live comfortably, using their cards to buy goods and services with anything leftover going back in the government coffers.
Predictions that came true:
- Credit Cards
Close, but we’re not quite there yet:
- Universal Basic Income
- Universal Healthcare
H.G. Wells and The World Set Free
Credit: Macmillan & Co./Wikipedia
Over thirty years before it became a reality, Wells predicted the use of uranium to create a weapon that was small in size but that created a reaction of as-yet-unseen power, an explosion that “would continue to explode indefinitely.”
It was physicist and member of the Manhattan Project Leo Szilard who conceived of and carried out the first controlled nuclear chain reaction – the necessary step to develop the atomic bomb. Szilard actually advocated against using the nuclear weapon, writing later on in 1968 that “knowing what it would mean – and I knew because I had read H.G. Wells – I did not want this patent to become public.”
Predictions that came true:
- use of uranium to create the atomic bomb
2001: A Space Odyssey
Both Arthur C. Clark’s sci-fi novel 2001: A Space Odyssey and the corresponding Siri Stanley Kubrick film featured a very iPad-like tablet computer decades before the Apple version became a ubiquitous part of your morning commute. Tech gadgets that resemble today’s smartphones, tablets, and laptops populate 2001‘s landscape.
Go here for more on Kubrick’s realistic futurism, including how he tapped IBM to create HAL, envisioning a computer of the future.
Predictions that came true:
- miniaturized versions of the 1960’s supercomputers: think tablets, smartphones, and laptops (or really, any computer that didn’t take up a whole room)
- HAL = Siri?
Close, but we’re not quite there yet:
- Siri hasn’t tried to kill us yet
Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles
Credit: Doubleday/Wikipedia
Random Twilight Zone tie-in: Rod Serling asked Bradbury to write several episodes of the Twilight Zone, but the only Bradbury-penned episode to make it on air was an adaptation of his short story “I Sing the Body Electric.” Bradbury was miffed that his work was deemed not ready for prime-time and threw a few choice insults Serling’s way, including an accusation that the TV writer plagiarized some of his episodes. (Mental Floss)
On to the business at hand…
The Martian Chronicles is Bradbury’s collection of connected short stories following mankind’s attempts to colonize Mars and the corresponding destruction of Earth over the years 1999-2057. One story in particular, “There Will Come Soft Rains,” focuses on a smart home that keeps plugging away at its’ daily tasks, though its’ residents and surroundings have been wiped out in a nuclear holocaust. The house is more advanced that anything we’ve been able to develop so far, but with Nest thermostats and voice-activated AI like Siri and Amazon’s Alexa, we’re definitely on our way.
Predictions that came true:
- smart homes that can adjust lighting, temperature, respond to voice commands for weather, news, music
Close, but we’re not quite there yet:
- super smart homes that can do just about anything, including cook your breakfast
- still no Mars!
Lucky Guess?
So what makes sic-fi writers so good at seemingly predicting the future? Is it that they’re more likely to have an academic background in the sciences? Or are these just lucky guesses? Let’s look at two schools of thought:
Credit: Ace/Wikipedia
Gibson is the godfather of cyberpunk (remember Hackers? That’s cyberpunk). Neuromancer is widely regarded as the inspiration behind The Matrix (1999) – the brothers Wachowski even lifted the term “matrix” from the novel. In fact, Gibson’s work is often regarded not just as a predictor of what was to come but as a guiding influence in the development of internet culture. But Gibson says that the sci-fi writer’s futuristic visions are akin to a magic 8 ball.
“I think the least important thing about science fiction for me is its predictive capacity. Its record for being accurately predictive is really, really poor! If you look at the whole history of science fiction, what people have said is going to happen, what writers have said is going to happen, and what actually happened — it’s terrible. We’re almost always wrong. Our reputation for being right relies on some human capacity to marvel at the times when, yay, you got it right!”
On the other hand, Joe Hansen of It’s OK To Be Smart (also from PBS Digital Studios) makes the argument that many sic-fi authors’ ability to forecast the future is the result of a background in the sciences.
What do you think?
Check out more future-predicting science fiction in this stellar infographic
