• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Things That Science Fiction Got Wrong…

3bodyproblem said:
They sure put a lot of stock in the value of switches and flashing lights though. Knobs too.
Click to expand...


At one time, these were common features of computers. Big panels of blinking lights served a purpose on primitive computers. A comparable panel for a modern microcomputer would be absurdly large, and the lights would be flashing so rapidly that nobody would be able to make any sense of them.

I was startled, recently, to watch the 1970 film Colossus: The Forbin Project, which depicted what was intended to be a futuristic megacomputer system. There were clear depictions of recognizable technology that, by now, have been obsolete for a very long time. Punch cards, teletype terminals, nixie tubes, open real magnetic tape, and so on. And, of course, the big panels of blinking lights. That's what computers were like in 1970, and that's how they imagined computers would be in the foreseeable future; only bigger.
 
Gr8wight said:
Where's my personal flying car?
Click to expand...


I think that for longer than I've been alive, there have been companies claiming to have “flying cars” or some other sort of personal aircraft just on the verge of being ready to be mass-produced and sold to the general public.

It hasn't happened yet, and I doubt it will any time soon. I think there are issues that pertain to flying vehicles that will always require that their numbers be more limited than ground-confined vehicles, and that those operating them have a much higher degree of skill and training.

Imagine the things that routinely go wrong with automobiles, either due to mechanical failure or driver error. These happen, of course, with the automobile safely on the ground. What if it became similarly common for such mishaps to occur with vehicles that were in the air?
 
Bob Blaylock said:
At one time, these were common features of computers. Big panels of blinking lights served a purpose on primitive computers. A comparable panel for a modern microcomputer would be absurdly large, and the lights would be flashing so rapidly that nobody would be able to make any sense of them.
Click to expand...
January issue of "Wired" mentions an expert system program designed to assist pathologists with post-mortem diagnosis. Apparently the program has better record than most (all?) living pathologists; its problem was that it gave the answer too fast. People would not trust its answers until programmers added some delay loops and blinking lights to create an impression of prolonged furious calculation.

So blinking lights still serve a purpose!
 
In The Fountains of Paradise, Arthur C. Clarke described today's laptop and tablet computers pretty well. However, that was published in 1979; the microcomputer revolution was already well underway (though practical home uses were still limited) and I had built my first home computer kit three years before. Reading it in 1979, I remember it feeling a lot like Clarke was "retconning the future" to conform to obvious but previously unforeseen new trends. Which was probably the case.

Just about every science fiction author makes space too small. They don't really have a choice. The extremely rare science fiction that makes space feel anywhere near its actual size, while still having human characters moving about in it, becomes horror. Like the short story The Stone City by George R.R. Martin.

I think anthropomorphic robots are likely in the future, they just turned out to be much harder to create than anticipated. They would have utility and versatility that couldn't be duplicated with small specialized robots. A robot that could climb a ladder or operate a hand shovel could do tasks that would otherwise require much larger heavier machines, and trading off speed for greater versatility is a proven trend (e.g. our ink jet printers are much slower than web presses).

Star Trek communicators never impressed me much as futuristic devices; the difference in size and range from two-way portable radios current at the time TOS first aired was not all that great (one to two orders of magnitude), and the shortcomings were also similar (limited range, constantly being jammed or rendered useless by "interference"). But the flip-open shape was visionary (or influential in cell phone design, one or the other).

SF writers and especially filmmakers seem to mostly disregard cameras altogether. They are either entirely absent ("I tell you, Captain, it was right there, I SAW it...") or have somehow become completely ambient, invisible, and omnivoyant ("Computer, play back the events that occurred in this room 37 hours ago...") but we rarely see or read about actual cameras being used to image something, or cameras being used tactically. "If only we had some magic device that could let us see what's happening in this room while we hide in that room." (Though, I can understand film and television directors being reluctant to film characters filming, most of the time.) However, among Star Trek technology the Tricorder stands out as visionary: we're not always sure what it was actually doing (though in City on the Edge of Forever we learn that it actually can record video) but it was always being used for something or other along the lines of scanning, analyzing, looking up the location of the nearest pizza place, or navigating. It, not the stodgy communicator whose limited capabilities would embarrass a Jitterbug user, predicted the app-running smart phone. (Which also suggests that Spock was playing Sudoku during all those boring planetary surface missions, at least until the energy-beast gobbled up a redshirt.)

Some of SF's most successful "predictions" will, I think, be inadvertent, meaning that they are motivated by plot or visual considerations rather than actual "we think this is how the future will be" predictifying. For instance, many space suits and hazard suits in SF movies have built-in lights illuminating the wearer's face, not for realism but so we can see the actors' faces. However, seeing each other's faces is actually pretty important to people in daily life too, so once we give up street lighting as mostly a huge waste of energy, nighttime LED face illuminators might become as common as wristwatches.

Respectfully,
Myriad
 
Last edited:
The most inaccurate science fiction is that which violates the laws of science, like: faster than light travel, time travel, anti-gravity, telekinesis, mind reading/melding, etc.
 
As has already been mentioned, most science fiction doesn't try to predict the future, but rather talks about neat futuristic stuff without caring too much about how unlikely or frankly contradictory they are.

My favorite science fiction work is Anticipations by H.G. Wells. Written in 1902, he predicts:

The rise of the automobile as a common means of transport
The freeway system (and the asphalt that made building them affordable)
Suburbs
Tract houses
globalization
increasingly socialist governments

None of which seems science fictiony to us, except that this was written more than a century ago, and derived with straightforward logic. Suburbs, for example, were an obvious consequence of the faster travel granted by freeways and cars, combined with a maximum commute time of two hours, the limit of human endurance even back then.

P.S.
Fangbaby - Hovercar
NSFW lyrics
 
Last edited:
What kbm99 said about it depending on the author is certainly true, some SF made better predictions than others. I don't recall the name of the short story, but I read one years ago from the 50's or late 40's, which took place in the 90's, wherein the robot servent would play his master's favorite records on his built-in phonograph.
 
Beelzebuddy said:
As has already been mentioned, most science fiction doesn't try to predict the future, but rather talks about neat futuristic stuff without caring too much about how unlikely or frankly contradictory they are.
Click to expand...

Er, no that would be fantasy. True science fiction is based in reality and follows the laws of physics as we currently know them, although certain liberties like "replicators" or "transporters" are taken in accordance with Clarke's Third Law:
#3 Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

At least to us hardcore sci-fi geeks. :)
 
The most interesting science fiction starts with a rather simple, singular "what if." The more "if" that gets stacked the more likely it is to veer into space opera rather than exploring today through the lens of an imaginable future.
 
3bodyproblem said:
Er, no that would be fantasy. True science fiction is based in reality and follows the laws of physics as we currently know them, although certain liberties like "replicators" or "transporters" are taken in accordance with Clarke's Third Law:
#3 Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

At least to us hardcore sci-fi geeks. :)
Click to expand...

As if there's much of a difference. There's a reason both get lumped together on the same shelf. Going from hard sci-fi to soft syfy to fantasy is walking down a spectrum, nothing more.
 
Beelzebuddy said:
There's a reason both get lumped together on the same shelf. Going from hard sci-fi to soft syfy to fantasy is walking down a spectrum, nothing more.
Click to expand...

Yes there is, it's because there a very few true science fiction writers left.

This spectrum you dismiss is the dividing line between Things Science Fiction Got Right and Things Science Fiction Got Wrong. ;)

That website has it right though, the better the science in Science Fiction the less you cringe. I've rolled my eyes right off the page quite a few times over the years. There's only so much a science fiction readers sensibilities can take.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom