on 18/1/02 3:14 am, John Garcia at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > On a different note.......... > > How many of you have read any of John Brunner's works? To be specific, > "Stand on Zanzibar" and "Shockwave Rider".
I've read both of those, and quite a few others. > The other day I saw an advertisement for some new Fox show called "The > Chamber", a quiz show that tries to shake the contestants by subjecting > them to different levels of environmental stress (noise, heat, cold, etc.) > There are similarites to the "Circus" shows in "Shockwave Rider". > > Many SF fans and authors have commented on how the authors (especially the > 50's and 60's authors) predictions for technology didn't pan out, but could > some (or many) have been right on regarding their social and cultural > speculations? Actually _The Shockwave Rider_ did quite well in some respects at least. According to _the New Hacker's Dictionary_ the term 'worm' (in the computer sense) is derived from the 'tapeworm' software featured in the novel. > So, I throw it out to the list: Have SF authors been more prescient in > predicting social and cultural changes than they have been in predicting > technological changes? A big problem with checking how accurate sf writers have been at predicting the future is when they get it right, we might not notice ! What I mean is that among all the little background details that get put in by the author, some of the ones that were anachronistic sf touches at the time the story was written have become reality in the intervening years and therefore invisible, and others haven't and are now anachronistic in a retro way, and only some kind of historian could tell. -- William T Goodall [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk
