SciFi authors predictions on 2012 from 1987

Saw a synopses in Salon but this is the archive.

Interesting.

Wolverton did pretty good but he took a very conservative view of progress. Which in this case happened to be correct.

Zelazny came close except he couldn't have foreseen that space exploration and biotechnology would slow to a crawl. I really do wish his latest book was about to be released because I would have pre-ordered it for my kindle.

didn't know Wolverton was around back then...huh.

Interesting.

Perhaps the most interesting thing to me is how little predictions about the future, not to mention the attitudes of science ficitional culture, have changed. The details and causes change, but the underlying ideas- fear of economic collapse, fear of environmental catastrophe, fear of social hegemony, belief in and fear of the stupidity of "the masses," and technological advancement as holding the potential for salvation- all continue to characterize the complex of ideas called "the future" for a certain segment of society. Whether that segment is a culture of writers still glowing in the light of the cyberpunk literary movement and the Turkey City lexicon or a larger, electronically formed culture that I call "geekdom," the preoccupations remain the same. Maybe they were only nascent then and have since become more universal, or maybe there simply hasn't been enough time for them to shift.

I wonder if that will continue to hold true over the next twenty five years. Someone make a note to remind me then.

(For an example of how the ideas that make up "the future" sometimes *do* change over time, seek out *Today Then: America's Best Minds Look 100 Years into the Future on the Occasion of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition,* edited by Dave Walter.)

Look at H.G. Wells The Shape of Things to Come, you see those exact same themes nearly 80 years ago.

Interesting article but the first line stopped me:

Quote:

Back in 1987, L. Ron Hubbard created a time capsule of sorts.

L. Ron Hubbard died on January 24, 1986. Be a bit rough to challenge other authors to predict what the world would be like in 25 years when he'd been cremated at least a year before.

Interesting article, though.

Yeah that and the author seems unduly enfatuated with that one author I've never in my life heard of but is apparently the "writers writer"... >_> yeah, okay guys.

How did Gerald Feinberg discover a non-existent particle?

"I am assuming that there have been no gross discontinuities in human life from such catastrophes as....an airborne mutation of the AIDS virus."


That angered me greatly. I stopped reading his prediction right there.

I'm not disputing that it is a catastrophe, in more than one way. But it has not pushed the human race to the brink of extinction.

That clause at the beginning of the prediction is just saying "assuming you're not looking at a post-apocalyptic wasteland, my predictions are..."

Whew, I should keep up with threads I post in.

What angered me was idea that it was even considered possible for HIV to become an airborne agent. It is complete hysteria.

In general, mutations are deleterious-- extremely deleterious. For something to suddenly switch up and become airborne is akin to one day your son or daughter shooting concussive energy blasts out of their eyes from genetic mutations.

There would have to be multiple genetic mutations for such a thing to occur-- and astronomically small for it to happen all at once suddenly.

Evolution/genetics just DOES NOT happen that way.






What HIV is good at doing is mutating key recognition sites that we generally use in medicine to prime the immune system (in vaccines) or to have drugs target. That is very different from a super-mutating organism that can suddenly change how it spreads itself.

At its base, HIV is functionally the same-- matter of fact, new medicines/vaccines are looking for targets that don't change much between all HIV viruses --however, yes, HIV has a high rate of mutation to interfere with drugs/vaccines.







So in effect, we're talking about, in human terms: you won't have children born with only one arm or leg (or none for that matter, unless there's a defect.) You won't have children born without opposable thumbs....you won't have kids born without vital organs. These things are VERY well conserved among humans because it's become pretty darn vital for humans to carry these things and survive from generation to generation. Natural selection has made sure there are very VERY low mutation rates in changes in these areas.

However, look at face shape, skin color, eye shape, nose shape, etc. It doesn't matter WHAT you look like. This is what HIV does, it changes what it looks like.....and, thus, makes it hard for our medicines to work.....but, it doesn't change what it really is at its core-- it still keeps it's version of "opposable thumbs, 2 arms, 2 legs, and a head."










Someone did bring up a good point, this was 1987 we are talking about.....and I was a little one at that time.....I'm not sure how long we've known these things about evolution and genetics. And I know HIV taught us a lot about viruses in general.

So, perhaps ironically, the very virus he was discussing in such an uneducated way.....was, in fact, the very virus that taught us this lesson in the first place.



GOD, I HATE YOU TEMPORAL MECHANICS!!! *shakes an O'Brien fist*



EDITTED: For spleling. And the below add-on:


P.S.: HIV is MUCH MUCH harder to get from unprotected sex than first thought. Sure, you can get HIV the first time you have sex with an HIV+ partner, even back-door sex (much higher risk).....but, it's not an absolute given you will get it even over a time period with repeated exposures. Using condoms correctly every time, you are golden. And oral sex: as long as you don't have open sores and....ummmm, don't finish in the oral area. You should be fine. (Of course, you can use a condom for that situation too making you absolutely safe.)

2nd EDIT: Had to work around a sex act as it was starred-out.

I suspect that the entire medical and genetic community has learned a lot ABOUT viruses from HIV, but yeah at that time it was pretty crazy nonsense being spouted on a near-daily basis.

Remember that we didn't start tracking the Human Genome and getting real results until well into the 90s and beyond, science and the medical sciences in particular kind of got a boost - ironic as you say - from this whole ordeal.

The fact that the virus has mutated enough in the last 20 years to *not kill its hosts* is indicative of what viruses REALLY do. They're good at it. That's why we use them to heal people. I wonder if they were predicting THAT?

I know of only one book that really got a lot right, and that was Nature's End - co-written by the same author who brought the craziness that was Communion. In it they postulated quite a few things that HAVE 'come true', more accurate in the social aspects of human life than the technical ones, but still pretty scary stuff.

Yes, I keep forgetting that DNA itself was only published around 1953. Really not all that long ago.

It is interesting how the virus has changed between Africa and America.

In America, with condoms and the fact that HIV is not "criminalized" (so information is much more freely available,) the virus takes longer to spread between Americans....so it became less virulent (as the more virulent strains killed themselves out before they could be passed.)

In Africa, HIV still kills quickly because condoms aren't used much (due to cost and culture)....and i've heard that HIV has adapted to be better passed through ummmm....(how do I say this without it being starred out?! Ugh) ....better passed through hot-dog-and-donut heterosexual encounters. Making it more likely the disease will be passed to women through unprotected sex.




Sorry, pathogens fascinate me

I don't blame SciFi authors for inaccurate science. They general aren't rocket scientists, quantum physicists, xeno-biologists or virologists in real life. The general public is told that viruses spread two ways, through direct contact or airborne. The notion of particularly nasty viruses like Ebola becoming airborne had already been used as story material so worrying that the new virus on the block, HIV, becoming airborne wasn't a stretch.

As it was what made HIV scarier than Ebola is it's long incubation period in the host, allowing it to be spread only through intimate contact before the host became symptomatic. Ebola burns out it's host too quickly to cause a wide spread epidemic while HIV could take months or years before it became a problem to the host, who died due to other infections masking the actual cause, allowing the infection to spread far and wide before it gets detected as an epidemic.