Last year we blogged on looking to the future – something we all are interested in regardless of our walk of life.
There are many ways to focus on the future – but one of them that seems to be increasingly valuable is what we read in novels. We all know that in our gut – and I’ve read about it too.
In his New York Times article: “Novelists Predict Future With Eerie Accuracy,” John Schwartz puts a punctuation mark on just how well novelists have been doing this.
The prediction game has generally been the bailiwick of science fiction, and many authors have shown startling foresight. Jules Verne placed his launching site for shooting men to the moon in Florida — Tampa, not Cape Canaveral, but let’s forgive that as a rounding error. And William Gibson and Bruce Sterling have mined the near future for years, in novels like Mr. Gibson’s “Pattern Recognition” and Mr. Sterling’s “Holy Fire.”
James E. Gunn, the director of the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas, said science fiction could even help encourage the future by preparing minds. Hugo Gernsback, the creator of a pioneering scientific magazine in 1926, predicted radar and night baseball, among other things; Arthur C. Clarke described satellite communications.
One writer who did this exceptionally well was Tom Clancy. The future he predicted is with us today across the globe.
More on John Schwartz’s article “Novelists Predict Future With Eerie Accuracy,” here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/sunday-review/novelists-predict-future-with-eerie-accuracy.html
