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The Predictions of Robert A. Heinlein, from the Cold War to the Waterbed
- Symmetry 8y agoI wonder why nobody has tried to make the alarm clock-ish system form Between Planets yet?
- amysox 8y agoYou mean the alarm clock system that Don uses at the hotel that has settings ranging from "Gentle Reminder" to "Earthquake"? That'd be fun. :) Interesting you bring up Between Planets, because that shows a prediction Heinlein made that isn't covered in this article. Read the description of the "crazy wagon," and, specifically, the conical metal cover it has that reflects away all incoming radar beams. Heinlein was basically describing stealth technology in 1951, six years before Pyotr Ufimtsev's paper on the subject...and it wasn't until 1976 that development started on the F-117, a real implementation of his idea.
- vegetablepotpie 8y agoI read Robert Heinlein's "I Will Fear No Evil". The book takes place in 2015. In one of the chapters there were characters who were looking for a freshly dead body and one of the characters suggested they could search computerized medical databases because "computers were growing increasingly interconnected". I found that funny, I was reading that book close to 2015 and I thought, "we already have the Internet". Then I realized the book was published in 1970, before even the personal computer revolution. So then I realized the incredible foresight Heinlein must have had to anticipate that people would network computers. In the "I Will Fear No Evil" universe computers are connected together in a slowly growing ad-hoc network. I think this was a reasonable prediction, most progress happens slowly and incrementally. "Revolutionary" change that happens quickly is the exception, rather than the rule.
- cgh 8y agoComputers have been networked since the late '50s-early '60s. SABRE, the airline reservation system, went online in 1960. Heinlein would have been well aware of networked computing.
- notahacker 8y agoyep. If anything, Henlein seeing the networking of computers as something that develops much more slowly than practical need for spaceflight has to go down as a big miss. cf John Brunner writing in 1970 about computer-enabled surveillance, data theft and inventing the concept of the internet worm in 1970 (and yes, he also wrote books with near-omnipotent talking computers...)
- ghaff 8y agoIn general, what science fiction authors tended to miss was the democratization of both access and content. See Encyclopedia Galactica. Knowledge is centralized and curated. An even better example comes from Oath of Fealty (Jerry Pournelle). There's this central knowledge repository but only some people can access it--or at least have some sort of mental Tier 1 access. Wikipedia it ain't.
- news_to_me 8y agoI think what a lot of people miss sometimes with science fiction is, it could have been that way. Wikipedia (and the early Internet) had a pretty intense open access culture, and I wouldn't be surprised if part of that was influenced by these stories directly.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> In general, what science fiction authors tended to miss was the democratization of both access and content. See Encyclopedia Galactica. Knowledge is centralized and curated. Instead of Asimov’s Encyclopedia Galactica, OTOH, see Adams, and Encyclopedia Galactica vs. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
- slivym 8y ago
- crooked-v 8y agoI'm reminded of the Sector General series by James White, where in the first book he had wireless earbuds connected to a remote computer acting as real-time translators, but characters still had to go to a (video)phone on the wall to talk to each other remotely.
- xutopia 8y agoIt is also missing Polyamory. Stranger in a Strange Land has the protagonist create a commune where free love abounds.
- cnasc 8y agoAnd in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, most families are organized as a sort of generational polygamy thing, typically with more men than women in the group because of the relative scarcity of women in the moon penal colony.
- nickff 8y agoMultiple women per man is usually referred to as 'polyandry'.
- dragonwriter 8y agoYes, but what is described is many-to-many relationships with a typically greater than 1:1 female:male ratio, which is not polyandry which is a system many-to-one female-to-male relationships.
- nickff 8y agoIn "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", it is described as a 'line marriage'. I have read the book, and thought the idea was quite interesting. The more recent book "Luna: New Moon" by Ian McDonald explores similar ideas (and is also set on the moon). I was trying to inform the parent commenter of the 'opposite' of "polygamy", but this was apparently unappreciated on HN. On that note, I think I will no longer be commenting on HN, due to the aggressive downvoting. I am aware of the guideline about commenting on downvotes, but I no longer care.
- dllthomas 8y ago"Polyandry" is the opposite of "polygyny". Both are "polygamy".
- joshklein 8y agoStranger in a Strange Land was always one of my favorite pieces of science fiction, but I never knew he was the author of Starship Troopers (1959) until a few weeks ago. Of course, I knew Starship Troopers (1997) as a goofy action flick when I was a teenager, but I just finished reading the novel this past weekend. The two works share little in common besides setting. The novel is as relevant to geopolitics today as it must have been in 1959. It poses challenging questions about whom within a society deserves authority over others.
- WorldMaker 8y agoSomething I've grown to appreciate about the film is that poses similar challenging questions in its own way. In hindsight, the film is much more in conversation with the book than it seems at surface level (more than just setting), because the film is dripping with satire and asks dark questions about fascist authoritarianism. I feel like a key to the film is that it is the best, most direct sequel to Robocop, which is also dripping with satire and dark questions of authoritarianism that are often overlooked in pop culture (Robocop's other sequels for instance misplace/misunderstand the satire pretty quickly).
- joshklein 8y agoI agree the movie is more interesting than my above comment implies, for the reason you highlight. That said, I dont believe the novel is about authoritarianism; it critiques universal suffrage, suggesting that only members of an in-group who have demonstrated sacrifice of the individual for the collective can be trusted to make decisions for the collective.
- WorldMaker 8y agoWhich arguably has been the state of history for longer than universal suffrage has existed. Disenfranchisement, and finding excuses for disenfranchisement, is easy. It's key to how authoritarians take power. Universal suffrage is hard, and under the tenets of democracy a necessary check on democracy. In critiquing universal suffrage, it critiques democracy's core tenets, and in doing that it asks you to think like an authoritarian. The film supposes that there is no question that propaganda and jack boots are the next steps after that. Also, I believe Heinlein was a provocateur bar none and he may have intended those follow up questions in subtext in the book as well. The book goes way out of its way in trying to determine if the war being fought is a Just War, for example, and one reading of it is that there is no such thing as a Just War, the need to keep repeating that discussion a proof that propaganda may be an issue in that setting, and that absolutely the reader should be questioning every facet of the criticism being offered about universal suffrage as well. I'd like to think that the film making that its text is possibly something that would have thrilled/amused Heinlein.
- lonalzarus 8y ago"...Heinlein never achieved stable and consistent recognition either during his lifetime or posthumously. His prose and ideas lacked the signature stylistic and thematic hallmarks that were to distinguish peers such as Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, and Isaac Asimov..." I really dislike these sorts of remarks. Heinlein is down in the records as one of the "Big Three" authors in the golden age of science fiction. Any Science Fiction reader knows how much of a giant he is. Just because The Atlantic, didn't decide to declare him a singular hidden gem, or HBO didn't make a series based on his works, doesn't mean he wasn't recognized or appreciated in full.
- bpizzi 8y agoThe author must just not be groking Heinlein.
- sizzzzlerz 8y agoNot sharing the water, as it were.
- sizzzzlerz 8y agoEveryone is entitled to their opinion. You, and I, as well, don't happen to agree with this one. After Asimov, RAH is my second favorite SciFi author, having read his entire catalog, many, multiple times. I have my favorites and disfavorites but, across the board, even with his teen stories and his later "dirty old man" books, his books all make interesting reads. His predictions just add to his legacy.
- lonalzarus 8y agoNo doubt, I'm also a cranky opinionated life long Science Fiction reader, and we are definitely in agreement. I read as much Heinlein as I could get ahold of as a young man. There's no better fuel for a young nerd than stories of sex, heroic individualism and engineering with a healthy dose of libertarianism. And I know how well regarded Heinlein is in his field. But what bothers me is the snow-clone nature of that statement that Heinlein was not recognized. It's like a knee -jerk default hyperbolic internet article closing, and I don't think it was true. Especially compared to people like Asimov and Clarke. They all had their little heyday as modern day prophets and fell by the wayside in the wider popular consciousness, no more "consistency" in recognition than any other. PKD, on the other hand seems to be bonafide cultural darling.
- Malic 8y agoRecommendation: The Extra Credits folks have been doing an Extra Sci Fi series that covers the big names of Sci Fi - and that included Heinlein. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaWMe5nC9SA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaWMe5nC9SA I liked it - it was a great primer on an author I was aware of but didn't know much about (yes, I need to catch up on my reading list).
- colechristensen 8y agoStranger in a Strange Land was my first Heinlein novel and I finished just a week or two ago. I am not sure if I loved it or hated it, but the direction it went was certainly unexpected. Unsettled, is I think the primary response.
- amysox 8y agoHere's a hint for you: The main character of Stranger is not Valentine Michael Smith; it's Jubal Harshaw. Look at it with that in mind.
- candeira 8y agoDoor Into Summer also predicted Roomba, but with a 50s sexist brand name: ``` What Hired Girl would do (the first model, not the semi-intelligent robot I developed it into) was to clean floors . . . any floor, all day long and without supervision. And there never was a floor that didn't need cleaning. It swept, or mopped, or vacuum-cleaned, or polished, consulting tapes in its idiot memory to decide which. Anything larger than a BB shot it picked up and placed in a tray on its upper surface, for someone brighter to decide whether to keep or throw away. It went quietly looking for dirt all day long, in search curves that could miss nothing, passing over clean floors in its endless search for dirty floors. It would get out of a room with people in it, like a well-trained maid, unless its mistress caught up with it and flipped a switch to tell the poor thing it was welcome. Around dinnertime it would go to its stall and soak up a quick charge-this was before we installed the everlasting power pack. There was not too much difference between Hired Girl, Mark One, and a vacuum cleaner. But the difference-that it would clean without supervision-was enough; it sold. ```
- crooked-v 8y ago> Anything larger than a BB shot it picked up and placed in a tray on its upper surface, for someone brighter to decide whether to keep or throw away I wish there was a Roomba with that feature.
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- sfRattan 8y agoAnother author of science fiction who made some chillingly accurate predictions was Hoshi Shinichi[1], whose works are generally not that well known in the West, even among some of the broader scifi fandom. In particular, I vividly remember reading his novella "Voice Net"[2] in college. From the late author's (now inconsistently accessible) website: > Shinichi Hoshi's futuristic story is set in the banally dubbed "Honeydew Condominium," a modern, twelve-story complex just outside the city. It starts at the gift shop on the building's first floor. The lackluster shop owner routinely uses his telephone to do just about everything: from counting cash register receipts to monitoring his vital signs. The story follows the seasons as it climbs floor to floor, watching people's lives change under an increasingly ubiquitous network of machines.[3] The novella was written in 1969, so he imagines everything as spoken over the telephone, and yet he describes: a service of personal information managers who call you each morning with reminders including friends' birthdays and local events, banking conducted almost entirely remotely with dubious sharing of spending habits, and many other eerily accurate parallels to today. At the time I was first reading the book, Facebook had just started to nag you about your friends' birthdays. Voice Net has a slow burn meta-narrative through its trajectory of short stories (each chapter) that builds in a very unsettling way and is really a treat. I won't say anything more about it here. It's a pity his work isn't more widely known in the West, though Voice Net was available on Apple's iBook store (which does not have a web portal I can link to here) when I first read it and appears to be on Amazon's Kindle store[4], though the latter may not be a translated version. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinichi_Hoshi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinichi_Hoshi [2]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24751717-voice-net# https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24751717-voice-net# [3]: https://web.archive.org/web/20180827191647/http://shinichihoshi.com/voice_net.html https://web.archive.org/web/20180827191647/http://shinichiho... [4]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L40GY50 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L40GY50