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Things That Science Fiction Got Wrong…

Fishstick said:
Sure, there's no flying cars. But seriously, you'd think that in 2011 you'd have toothpaste that didn't ruin the taste of OJ.
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***That had better have been orange juice or you have ruined my dinner! :boxedin:
 
Mark6 said:
The other is TV shows where people compete for money in degrading semi-gladiatorial contests. Common in 1970's SF, and totally farfetched then. Of course, reality (pun intended) turned out a lot less lethal than portrayed back then, but still no one in his right (or even wrong) mind would have imagined 30 years ago the otherwise very peaceful and safety-minded society revel in people humiliating themselves.

Anythng else come to mind?
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Iranian clerics would have a word with you with all the boob quakes going on!
 
One of the best jokes in Stargate : SG1 is the way that hurling lumps of high-speed metal at a target by means of a simple chemical reaction is a seriously hoopy idea to more "advanced" cultures.

A bullet is an energy weapon which can disrupt all manner of things, and letting them off is a blast. What more can you ask for?
 
N.Texas said:
Firemen don't burn books. It is interesting that printed work has been in decline and it's value has decreased. Sad really.
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Another way to look at it is books free from paper chains, finding their digital wings. How many Blackberries, PC's, or iPads have books on board? Amazon's Kendal is strictly for digital books. Many readers keep digital and paper copies of books, protecting the collectible paper and letting the digital go 'dog eared'.
 
bokonon said:
I think Blade Runner's setting was less than a decade in the future, and it's pretty clear that Los Angeles won't be crawling with replicants by then.
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You have evidence that it isn't already? Or is this just what you want us to think? Hmmm.

Tell us just the good things you remember about ... your mother.
 
CapelDodger said:
One of the best jokes in Stargate : SG1 is the way that hurling lumps of high-speed metal at a target by means of a simple chemical reaction is a seriously hoopy idea to more "advanced" cultures.

A bullet is an energy weapon which can disrupt all manner of things, and letting them off is a blast. What more can you ask for?
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I thought that was a really good scene as well because they took it further and said those staff weapons were just for "show" and not very accurate over distances. It was all very true based on how the their fictitious weapons operated in the show. A great example of sci-fi.
 
Dick Tracy - 2-way wrist TV. TV, not radio.

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This thread reminded me that I need to dig out my old copy of Harry Harrison's Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers.
There is so much wrong in that story.
 
Not Science Fiction, but had elements of Science Fiction: Prince of Darkness.
Scientists were using tachyons to transmit videos of Satan's arrival to the past.
 
Psi Baba said:
The biggest mistake any science fiction author can make is putting an actual date on the setting of his story, unless it's at least a thousand years in the future. For people with such incredible imagination and vision, so many of them who wrote in the 50s and 60s seemed to think that the 90s and 00s were in the unforeseeable future.

As for meals in pill form, Wired had an article that explained that the required amount of protein, fat, and carbohydrates that a human needs each day still requires a certain mass of actual substance, no matter how concentrated. You just can't compress an entire meal into a pill. There is just no way around it.
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Bikewer said:
Asimov said that one of the things sci-fi "got wrong" was computers. He had envisioned huge, centralized machines with a large number of remote public-access "nodes" where one could ask questions and such.
The notion that everyone would have their own (or several!) was pretty unlikely.
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I've read more than one sci-fi story where the characters are jetting along in spaceships for interplanetary travel, and they're using slide rules for their calculations. I think the last one was The Ghost Galaxies by Piers Anthony. We have the technology to travel at orders of magnitude above c, but can't figure out a calculator yet. :confused:
 
Beelzebuddy said:
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.

NSFW lyrics
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I can't remember the story, but I think I recall that H.G. Wells didn't predict a moon mission until 2030. It took me a long time to look up, but it wasn't a book by Wells. It was a screenplay by Wells based on his book, The Shape of Things to Come. The screenplay is called Things to Come. It's a weird example of a movie being very different from a book even though they were both written by the same author. Anyways, the film was screened in 1936 and had the first manned mission around the moon taking place in 2036.

Star Trek showed warp drive that we won't reach by 2060, but it also showed computers that are weaker than the ones we have now. We'll never have a transporter like that, but that wasn't even in the original script. They put it in because the shuttle craft couldn't fit in the original studio or something like that. Don't be discouraged by science fiction not immediately becoming true.

We already have rudimentary tricorders on cellular phones. To the credit of diplomacy, we have so far avoided a third world war. Star Trek had WWIII taking place in the 1990s I think. There's a bright side.

Fishstick said:
Sure, there's no flying cars. But seriously, you'd think that in 2011 you'd have toothpaste that didn't ruin the taste of OJ.
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There are flying cars, but they aren't legal because they would cause too many bad accidents according to Homeland Security and some other agencies. It's probably a good rule. Popular Mechanics had a cover story on them a few months back.
 
Flesh sexbots with robot brains. I was certain they'd be real by this time.
 
Bob Blaylock said:
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.
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I've sometimes wondered if Colossus would have crashed on the year 2000.:D
 
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