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Extrapolation is not easy, and doing it for the short term renders the predictor especially vulnerable to being caught in an error. These writers should get credit for sticking their necks out, regardless of whether they turned out right or wrong. (Read on, and youll see that both threw in clinkers.)
I dont intend to make fun of the cases where they missed the mark. Both successes and failures are instructive, and their explanations of their reasoning are even more valuable. Besides, its not always their fault! Maybe weve missed paths we should have taken.
Willy Ley
Your Life in 1977 Copyright © by Willy Ley | ||
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In addition to unforeseeable inventions, the life of the predictor is rendered difficult by the fact that even predictable innovations have to overcome two obstacles and it is very difficult to judge whether these obstacles will be overcome. Obstacle numero One is Tradition in the widest possible meaning of the word. Whether an innovation will be accepted in spite of an existing (and opposing) tradition is about as difficult to predict as the outcome of Russian roulette. The second, and usually much more serious obstacle, is the capital invested in something that exists. | Topic: | |
There just arent enough wavelengths to accommodate personal communications for fifteen million people. The crowding is bad enough as it is. Scientists who fired rockets for upper atmosphere research from Fort Churchill in Canada told me that one day they had trouble with their own radio communications because they kept receiving messages from and for a fleet of radio cabs in a city in South Carolina. This, of course, was a freak event, but I recall the annoyance of a cab driver in Washington D.C. who received the instructions of a laundry truck dispatcher and could not get his own messages through. Personal communicators will be fine in Antarctica and may have a place in Arizona or Alaska, but wont do any good between Boston and Washington D.C. on the East Coast, between San Francisco and San Diego on the West Coast or around the great lakes in the middle of the continent. | Topic: | |
When it comes to city traffic I feel that the only real solution lies in eliminating, by law, private transportation inside the city. This is what I mean: supposing you drew a line some distance outside the congested area. Beyond this line you can travel in any manner you like, but vehicles must be left outside this line. From the line on inward you have to proceed by public transportation, subways, buses and taxicabs: vehicles that keep moving all the time. | Topic: | |
text checked (see note) Feb 2005 |
This piece has appeared in several revisions, and under two titles. The original notion was a look ahead to the end of the 20th century, from its midpoint.
Heinlein returned to the piece (and its original working title) twice, in 1965 for its appearance in The Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein, and in 1980 when that collection was revised and extended to create Expanded Universe. The undated portions are all (I believe) from the 1965 version.
Pandoras Box
Copyright © 1966, 1980 by Robert A. Heinlein Where To?Copyright © 1952 by Galaxy Publishing Corp. | ||
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Extrapolation means much the same in fiction writing as it does in mathematics: exploring a trend. It means continuing a curve, a path, a trend into the future, by extending its present direction and continuing the shape it has displayed in its past performancei.e., if it is a sine curve in the past, you extrapolate it as a sine curve in the future, not as an hyperbola, nor a Witch of Agnesi, and most certainly not as a tangent straight line. | Topic: | |
Very little of the great literature of our heritage arose solely from a wish to create art; most writing, both great and not-so-great, has as its proximate cause a need for money combined with an aversion to, or an inability to perform, hard honest labor. Fiction writing offers a legal and reasonably honest way out of this dilemma. | Topic: | |
The conclusions reached were: Could the Doomsday Machine be built?yes, no question about it. What would it cost?quite cheap. A seventh type hardly seems necessary. Note (Hals): end note | Topic: | |
Pandoras Box was the original title of an article researched and written in 1949 for publication in 1950, the end of the half-century. Inscrutable are the ways of editors: it appeared with the title Where To? and purported to be a nonfiction prophecy concerning the year 2000 A.D. as seen from 1950. (I agree that a science fiction writer should avoid marijuana, prophecy, and time paymentsbut I was tempted by a soft rustle.) | ||
AXIOM: A nine-days wonder is taken as a matter of course on the tenth day. AXIOM: A common-sense prediction is sure to err on the side of timidity. AXIOM: The more extravagant a prediction sounds the more likely it is to come true. | Topic: | |
1 | 1980 [...] However, I am not commissioned to predict what we could do but to predict (guess) what is most likely to happen by 2000 A.D. Our national loss of nerve, our escalating anti-intellectualism, our almost total disinterest in anything that does not directly and immediately profit us, the shambles of public education throughout most of our nation (especially in New York and California) cause me to predict that our space program will continue to dwindle. | |
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1965 [...] | Topic: |
1980 [...] We will not get a return of the extended family of the sort that characterized the 19th century and the early 20th . . . but the current flux of swingers clubs, group marriages, spouse swapping, etc., is, in my opinion, fumbling and almost unconscious attempts to regain the pleasure, emotional comfort, and mutual security once found in the extended family of two or more generations back. | ||
4 | 1950 It is utterly impossible that the United States will start a preventive war. We will fight when attacked, either directly or in a territory we have guaranteed to defend. 1965 Since 1950 we have done so in several theaters and are doing so in Viet Nam as this is written. Preventive or pre-emptive war seems as unlikely as ever, no matter who is in the White House. | |
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1965 [...] I underestimated (through wishful thinking) the power of human stupiditya fault fatal to prophecy. | Topic: |
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1950 The cult of the phony in art will disappear. So-called modern art will be discussed only by psychiatrists. 1965 No new comment. 1980 One may hope. But art reflects culture and the world is even nuttier now than it was in 1950; these are the Crazy Years. | Topic: |
10 | 1950 By the end of this century mankind will have explored this solar system, and the first ship intended to reach the nearest star will be abuilding. 1965 Our editor suggested that I had been too optimistic on this onebut I still stand by it. It is still thirty-five years to the end of the century. For perspective, look back thirty-five years to 1930the American Rocket Society had not yet been founded. Another curve, similar to the one herewith in shape but derived entirely from speed of transportation, extrapolates to show faster-than-light travel by year 2000. I guess Im chicken, for I am not predicting FTL ships by then, if ever. But the prediction still stands without hedging. 1980 My money is still on the table at twenty years and counting. Senator Proxmire cant live forever. Note (Hals): But to give the devil his due: Proxmires campaign finance report was a wonder. All the expenditures were for stationery and postage expended in returning contributions, with a letter explaining that he didnt accept any. That is a politician worthy of note. (The next race for his seat set a new national spending record, Im sorry to report.) end note | |
11 | 1980 [...] | |
12 | 1980 [...] But dont be surprised if the Japanese charge you a very high fee for stamping their visa into your passport plus requiring deposit of a prepaid return ticket or, if you ask for immigrants visa, charge you a much, much higher fee plus proof of a needed colonial skill. For there is intelligent life in Tokyo. | |
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1980 [...] I shall continue to fly regularly for two reasons: 1) Mrs. Heinlein and I hope to go out in a common disaster. 2) Consider the alternatives: AMTRAK (ugh!), buses (two ughs!) and driving oneself. | Topic: |
1950 Here are things we wont get soon, if ever: Travel through time. Travel faster than the speed of light. Radio transmission of matter. Manlike robots with manlike reactions. Laboratory creation of life. Real understanding of what thought is and how it is related to matter. Scientific proof of personal survival after death. Nor a permanent end to war. (I dont like that prediction any better than you do.) Note (Hals): end note | ||
1950 [...] | ||
1950 In 1900 the cloud on the horizon was no bigger than a mans handbut what lay ahead was the Panic of 1907, World War I, the panic following it, the Depression, Fascism, World War II, the Atom Bomb, and Red Russia. Today the clouds obscure the sky, and the wind that overturns the world is sighing in the distance. The period immediately ahead will be the roughest, cruelest one in the long, hard history of mankind. | ||
1965 [...] | Topics: | |
My confidence in our species lies in its past history and is founded quite as much on Mans so-called vices as on his so-called virtues. When the chips are down, quarrelsomeness and selfishness can be as useful to the survival of the human race as is altruism, and pig-headedness can be a trait superior to sweet reasonableness. If this were not true, these vices would have died out through the early deaths of their hosts, at least a half million years back. I have a deep and abiding confidence in Man as he is, imperfect and often unlovableplus still greater confidence in his potential. No matter how tough things are, Man copes. He comes up with adequate answers from illogical reasons. But the answers work. Last to come out of Pandoras Box was a gleaming, beautiful thingeternal Hope. | Topic: | |
text checked (see note) Feb 2005
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