Top sci-fi authors discuss the future of technology :
Science fiction isn't (as a rule) about predicting the future, and science fiction writers aren't trying to predict it.
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But many science fiction stories are set in the future, which means they need to include the future of technology (or present reasons why things haven't changed). That is, they have to extrapolate from "what/where things have been and are" to "what/where might be."
We invited noted science fiction authors Larry Niven, Robert Sawyer, Nancy Kress and Charles Stross to share their thoughts on technology-related predictions, including lessons learned in the 'business' of imagining what the future might be like. Here's what they had to say.
Read what they say....
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Those linked-to essays are quite nice. I have enjoyed many converations, and performed panels at cons with each of Larry Niven, Robert Sawyer, Nancy Kress and Charles Stross.
I also stand by my occasionally correct predictions in print.
If I may repost from Chad Orzel's "Ask a ScienceBlogger: Science Fiction Promotes Science?" thread,
# 2 | Jonathan Vos Post | November 24, 2008 3:18 PM:
Published science fiction has led directly to patents.
The late Sir Arthur C. Clarke famously invented the synchronous communication satellite, and failed to patent it because it was ridiculed by the UK Patent Office. His essay on this, I seem to recall, was: "How I lost a billion dollars in my spare time."
The Water Bed was described so well by Robert A. Heinlein that the person who applied for a patent had the application denied by Heinlein's Prior Art.
The late Dr. Robert Forward described "true microgravity" (i.e. less than 10^-6 g) attainable in orbit at the centroid of 4 massive spheres of heavy metal. Within 365 days of publication, he submitted the patent application. Which was granted.
Similarly, he described a device with three components: Sun, Earth, and solar sail, with the solar sail (pushed by light pressure and pulled by gravity) maintaining a stable position over the Earth NOT in Keplerian orbit. And the patent was granted.
I had a short story, published in the special Rose Parade/Rose Bowl issue of the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, including the Pasadena Star News, which described the use of magnetoencephalography to read the intention of muscular action roughly 200 milliseconds before the human is conscious of that intention, in order to do teleoperation of devices in Earth orbit beyond LEO, and had the aerospace company that was my employer agree that this was patentable, and thus pay for my copying and postage expenses to submit the long version for Science Fiction magazine publication.
I did publish the 1980 prediction in Omni Magazine that we would find a giant black hole in the center of our Milky Way, and the 1979 prediction in Omni that we would have a fierce political debate over a new generation of space-based antiballistic missile defenses (now known by the science fiction name of "Star Wars").
For that matter, I had a story "Skiing the Methane Snows of Pluto" in Volume 1, Number 1 of Focus, the magazine of the British Science Fiction Association. In this story, I explicitly predicted -- years before the Voyager spacecraft provided dramatic confirmation -- volcanos on Io, the tectonically active pizza- colored moon of Jupiter.
One critic said: "That might be a lucky guess..."
Well, in a word, yes.
But these examples suggest another reason that one may see science fiction's role in promoting science.