Did 1950's sci-fi have it right?

[Stephen Tashi]

I used to think that 1950's sci-fi go it wrong. It had rockets using their thrusters to make soft landings. It also had rocket ships that looked like this: https://www.techspot.com/news/82122-elon-musk-reveals-spacex-stainless-steel-starship-rocket.html

 

[hutchphd]

We'll see...
Soon if Mr Musk is correct in his assessment.
There is something exhilarating in his impetuousness. He is either a genius or certifiable. So far he's done pretty well, but I fear he could be both!

 

[nsaspook]

I'm still waiting for 50's flying saucers.

 

[hutchphd]

And elon musk will be happy that they are reusable:

 

[HallsofIvy]

One thing I remember about early sci-fi is that Venus was always depicted as a swamp because of the "clouds"! Once it was discovered that those "clouds" were not water but more like a "plastic soup" that was dropped.

 

[DEvens]

Some things were gotten right by some authors. Lots of things were wrong.

No small part was wrong because an author stood up and said, clearly and eloquently, if you keep doing that the cat will claw you.

I don't remember what story exactly that's from, but I think it's from Heinlein. I seem to recall that the main character was holding forth about how the situation going on in the novel was horrible and would get worse. Then he turned to the child playing with the cat and said to stop annoying the cat or it would fight back. Then he turned to continue holding forth about the situation. And the situation in the novel was obviously a not-very-disguised metaphor for the current situation in the real world. Then the kid let's out an unholy WHOOP because the cat had clawed him.

For example: _1984_ might well have woken up a few people to the dangers of information controlling tyranny. Possibly we pushed that off, for at least a little while, because of it. It might have been helped along some by other authors doing the same thing such as _Fahrenheit 451_. So if we are not in an oppressive all-controlling tyranny, maybe the books themselves had a little to do with it.

On the other hand... I was at a worldCon a few years ago. And they showed videos of the Delta Clipper.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X
They showed it at the closing ceremonies. The person announcing it said it was a rocket ship that landed on its rocket "as God and Robert Heinlein intended." The cheer that went up in the room at that vibrated the chairs. When that rocket took off, hovered, gently moved side ways, hovered again, then gently returned to the ground, the cheer that went up again rattled the chairs. When the MC explained that the full design might not need a heat shield, because it would land butt first, and use the rocket to cool the butt, the cheer that went up for *that* rattled the floor under the chairs.

Lots of things predicted but were not *quite* right. Dick Tracy watch-phones are not quite cell phones. We don't quite have flying cars, but soon may have computer-driven cars. We don't have food paste, of which I'm pretty glad. Robots never got as far along as Dr. Asimov suggested, though they are getting there.

 

[Vanadium 50]

We don't have food paste

 

[DEvens]

vegemite

Heh. For suitable values of "food." Leftover brewers yeast is technically food in that there are calories in it that a human is capable of extracting.

 

[DaveC426913]

I used to think that 1950's sci-fi go it wrong. It had rockets using their thrusters to make soft landings. It also had rocket ships that looked like this: https://www.techspot.com/news/82122-elon-musk-reveals-spacex-stainless-steel-starship-rocket.html

As I think about futuristic story lines, I am led to believe that predicting what the future will be like is not the goal. To us, a visual depiction the future will be inscrutable.

The primary goal is to bridge the gap between our present thinking and the future.

Remember Minority Report with Tom Cruise? They introduced the concept of haptic control - using gestures and movements to interact with a system. But to make the point, they had to use big sweeping gestures involving the whole arm. In reality, a single finger flip will be all that's necessary.

The point of intelligent interaction with the world is economy - to reduce human interaction to the minimum needed, and to let the computer anticipate. But stories are about humans, not machines.

How do you show a futuristic house cleaning system if it doesn't actually have to clean up the house, but keeps the house from getting dirty in the first place? That's pretty passive visually.

Imagine what Star Trek would be like if they actually used computers even a fraction of the way we use them today, never mind in a few centuries. At blinding computer speeds, battles would be over before they began.

They were smart to go from hand-held communicators to worn badges. But of course, why do you need a gadget at all? Futurism is less about an accurate picture what the future will look like, and more about inspiring ideas among the preconceptions we currently have.