What Some of the Greatest Science Fiction Writers Thought 2012 Would Be Like
What Some of the Greatest Science Fiction Writers Thought 2012 Would Be Like
25 years ago, a group of writers and scientists offered their visions of today’s world. What did they get right? And what did they miss?
Back in 1987, L. Ron Hubbard created a time capsule of sorts. He challenged his fellow science fiction writers, along with a smattering of famous scientists, to write letters to the people of 2012 offering their visions of what the world might look like in another 25 years. (Yes, that Hubbard — the Scientology guy. But he was a well-known SF writer before he started the church, and it was in that guise that he threw down this challenge.)
So here we are, in the high summer of 2012, and it’s time to go back and see just how much they got right — and wrong.
The full collection of letters Hubbard got for his time capsule is here. A lot of the greats offered their thoughts. There’s Fredrick Pohl, the genre’s legendary editor (who’s still at it, after 70 years in the business); Jerry Pournelle, writer of political and military SF, who also did some speechwriting for President Reagan; Roger Zelazny, who mined the world’s great mythologies for his stories; Gregory Benford, astrophysicist-turned-Hugo winner; Nobel Prize-winning physicist Sheldon Glashow; and Isaac Asimov, arguably the greatest of them all.
I invite you to go read the whole thing, because it’s fascinating to see what some of the most forward-thinking and imaginative storytellers of that time saw when they cast themselves toward today. It’s a portrait of the hopes and desires of an earlier generation — some of them uniquely of their time, others the same dreams that every generation carries for its children. And looking at what they got right — and what they got wrong — offers some insight into the way we think about our own future now.
Here’s my commentary on some of the topics they touched on.
Some interesting results!!