Skip to main content

The Challenge To Science Fiction’s Prediction of Future Technology

A young woman is riding a hoverboard above a futuristic city.
Credit: Pixabay.com



Even though science fiction tends to anticipate future events and can be said to be prophetic, it may be getting harder for it to do that. This is especially because technology is changing and advancing at faster rates than it had 40 years ago and is increasingly doing so. That’s especially the case with computer technology, including internet and handheld devices. So it shouldn’t be too surprising that an article at the scholarly website, JStor Daily (daily.jstor.org) poses the question in its title “Can Science Fiction Predict the Future of Technology?”  

The author of the article criticises the idea of science fiction as anticipatory of future technology. However, there is some truth to what she says, namely that not all science fiction gets future technology and its influence on society right. She also says, basically, that at its core science fiction is more about the present than it is the future. What?! you may be saying. Well like all fiction regardless of genre, a science fiction story is a product of the time it is written in. But sci fi often particularly uses present events to imagine (if not predict) future ones. Even though the article lacks emphasis on how the genre has gotten its predictions right, I still found it interesting and informing and so I suggest taking a look at it.

Do you think the rapidly increasing advancement of technology is outpacing science fiction’s ability to anticipate the future?

Until next time . . .

Comments

  1. Seems a just question. I used to read a lot of sci/fi fantasy, but not recently. I do know that technical writers like Asimov did do a relatively good job of predicting, and so did George Orwell and others back in the last century, but as to new writers, I don't really know. I'm over visiting from the IWSG March posting!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for stopping by Lisa! We can definitely see some of the similarities in technology and modern events and issues to those in the stories by SF authors of the previous century. Now whether new writers are getting the anticipations right, maybe it's too early to tell?

      Delete
  2. Great job here on _______ I read a lot of blog posts, but I never heard a topic like this. I Love this topic you made about the blogger's bucket list. Very resourceful. best light therapy glasses

    ReplyDelete
  3. This challenge highlights the evolving nature of both science fiction and technology, emphasizing the need for creativity, critical thinking, and adaptability in envisioning and shaping the future. By revisiting past predictions and exploring emerging trends, we can gain a deeper understanding of the complex relationship between fiction, technology, and society.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book-To-Movie: Stephen King’s 'The Raft'

Credit: Pixabay.com It's the third Saturday of the month and so that means it's time for another Book-To-Movie ! In a Book-To-Movie we review a book and its movie adaptation. One of the reasons I as a horror fan don’t read a lot of Stephen King’s work is because most of it consists of novels that go more than 400 pages. I have a short attention span when it comes to reading, ironically since I consider myself an avid reader, and so I normally won’t read a work that is much more than the equivalent to a 350-page mass market paperback. The other reason why I don’t read a lot of King’s work is that, as literary scholars will tell you, a lot of his writing is poor. However, he does have some good writing in his works, especially his earlier stuff, including his short horror tales. So if I read anything by Stephen King it’s usually his short stories or novellas. One of his collections I’ve read is Skeleton Crew which includes some of his good, or at least...

Book-To-Movie: ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’

Credit: Wikimedia Commons I apologise for posting outside our regular post-day which is late Saturday night/early Sunday morning. However, I got behind on several things last week and so had to postpone the post to today.  I’ve been a reader of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes books ever since I was 11. What I’ve always liked so much about the series is that, like a good horror story, the stories often take place in dark settings and involve bizarre cases. Conan Doyle’s novel, “The Hound of the Baskervilles”, definitely contains these elements. It’s a detective story that crosses over into the gothic horror genre. Several movie adaptations of the novel have been made that go as far back as a 1915 German silent film. In 1959 Hammer Studios released a version starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. As much as I’m a fan of the Hammer horror films, I have not seen that one yet. The only one that I’ve seen so far is the 1939 adaptation starring that other big name in classic...

The Top 5 Book-To-Movie Reviews of 2022

Credit: Pixabay.com Happy New Fear everybody! (Of course, I really mean New Year. I’m a horror writer, so what do you expect?) If you read my Facebook post the other night, you can see that 2022 kind of ended  badly for A Far Out Fantastic Site. As I said in the post, our monthly Book-To-Movie  reviews have run late into the following month. Well, this is the first time in the series' history, that a Book-To-Movie (BTM) has actually run late into the following year. So, this blog post was originally supposed to be an end-of-year one but the internet in my area went down due to a big New Year's Eve storm. It didn’t go back up until last night. So, consider this post a New Year one even thought we’re going to look back on some BTMs of 2022.  In a Book-To-Movie, we review a work of prose fiction and its movie adaptation. However, because this year is just starting, and our BTM was supposed to occur on the last Saturday of December at the latest, and I don’t have a movie ada...