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Dear Everybody,<br>
<br>
Dick Tracy probably takes the cake with his two-way wrist radios, but
that is a crime comic strip and not SF. However, a few corrections are
in order. The title of the Heinlein SF short story is actually " -- We
Also Walk Dogs" and it appears in a collection of Robert Heinlein's
short stories. Anthologies are collections of works (essays, short
stories, and other text works) on a variety subjects and by a variety
of authors, although there may be overarching themes or common focuses
to given anthologies. If the works are all by a single author then it's
called a collection.<br>
<br>
Actually I find it is much more interesting to find the things that SF
didn't predict. For example, there's a Henry Kuttner story where the
protagonist wants to find out what's on the television news and he pops
into a cinema showing the television news. The success of SF
predictions, I'm afraid, is put down to the 'shotgun effect' where if
you predict enough things a few of them are bound to be correct.<br>
<br>
Heinlein himself wrote a few SF stories, novels and short stories,
wherein he anticpated that World War 3 was most likely to happen in the
twentieth century. Strangely enough, I, for one, am quite happy his
predictions in this area were wrong.<br>
<br>
If anything, the most important prediction makes about the future is a
simple one, and it happens with every SF story set in the future, any
future, namely, that the future will be different. Whether any of them
is ever right is immaterial, we should rejoice in SF's diversity in its
propositions for the future.<br>
<br>
best,<br>
<br>
Jeff<br>
<br>
On 3/02/2010 3:40 PM, Dalrymple, Garry wrote:
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<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" size="2"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Dear All<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" size="2"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" size="2"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">‘Grace Cormet’s telephone
buzzed. She took it out of her pocket and said, ‘Yes?’ <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" size="2"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" size="2"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">That passage was from
Robert Heinlein’s short story, ‘We
also Walk Dogs’, published in a 1954 copyrighted Anthology, ‘The
Green hills of Earth’, described on the back of the book as the second
book of the future History series about life in the 21<sup>st</sup>
Century.
Is this a first ever SF description of a wireless mobile phone being a
routine
device?<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" size="2"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" size="2"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">In John Birmingham’s
‘World War 2.1’
series the ‘pad’ computer is the universal personal possession /
communication device. Has this ‘prediction’
already been superceded by the powers of the just recently announced
Apple Ipad?
<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" size="2"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" size="2"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Anyone care to suggest
instances of items that were optimistically
‘predicted in SF’ but which arrived ahead of time in the real
world?<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" size="2"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" size="2"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Garry P Dalrymple<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" size="2"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Still waiting for my
Aircar and personal jet pack<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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