Does Science Fiction Have Any Predictive Skill?

[Solly]

We always hear about science fiction predicting stuff, but like in some fields of science it's quite easy to get something right every now and then if you predict a million and one things..

[Ned]

War of the Worlds seems spot on about the bug. I think that may be a major problem we will encounter while visiting other worlds. We may have to send out remote units first to bring back alien bugs in order to develop vaccines. Otherwise, first expeditions will be wiped out.

[DaShi]

Have there been a million and one works of science fiction?

Star Trek predicted quite a bit in itself. Cell phones, race relations, big screen TVs, Shatner's receding hairline.

[Spiffor]

[Sandman]

Basically, no.

[DaShi]

Originally posted by Ned
War of the Worlds seems spot on about the bug. I think that may be a major problem we will encounter while visiting other worlds. We may have to send out remote units first to bring back alien bugs in order to develop vaccines. Otherwise, first expeditions will be wiped out.

That really depends on the bug. Bacteria maybe a problem, but they are rather easy to protect against and you might not encounter anything more harmful to you than the locals. Viruses would be an almost nil threat, since they are highly specialized to attack local hosts. It would be some time til they adapted to infect people.

Really, the War of the Worlds ending is absurd.

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by Ned
War of the Worlds seems spot on about the bug. I think that may be a major problem we will encounter while visiting other worlds. We may have to send out remote units first to bring back alien bugs in order to develop vaccines. Otherwise, first expeditions will be wiped out.

You talk as though War of the World as been validated since it came out...
We don't have any more reason to believe such an idea or it's opposite then when that book was published.

Personnally I think it's one of the lesser probable sci-fi scenario.

Diseases rarely jump ship from species to species, and when they do, it's from close species, say mammals or birds.

Anyway, I don't really know for sure, but I think we could find examples of science-fiction ideas that are more probable than this.

More on topic, some hard Science-fiction authors were heavily based on science.
Arthur C. Clarke for example invented geostationary satellite etc...
Some authors definetly have SOME predictive power...

[Ned]

Well, crews returning from the Moon had to go through quarantine. NASA obviously believes that alien bugs could be a problem.

[DaShi]

The Chinese brought guns on their manned missions. Space agencies do nutty stuff. Better safe than sorry.

[Ned]

Lul and DaShi, would you, if you were a NASA scientist, advise that we return samples to Earth for analysis before landing on planets/moons capable of supporting life?

[DaShi]

Are the astronauts going to be taking their helmets off on strange planets?

[Impaler[WrG]]

Sci-Fi is such a huge body of work with such wide ranging predictions that I'm fairly certain that any most of the likly future senarios have been predicted already. In hindsight its easy to find a work of Sci-fi that had a correct prediction. Its much like finding a stock market broker who can predict the stock market. Because practicaly every possible prediction is made by someone its trivial in hindsight to find one which made an acurate prediction but this don't mean that their any better then random chance.

Things like 1984, writen from a standpoint of political prediction rather then tecnological prediction are far more insightfull. I would also sight major philisophical works like Machiavelli's the Prince as time tested handbooks for predicting the future because human nature has remained a constant.

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by Ned
Lul and DaShi, would you, if you were a NASA scientist, advise that we return samples to Earth for analysis before landing on planets/moons capable of supporting life?

Yes, I would take precaution.
That doesn't mean I don't believe that a problem will be highly unlikely.

Remember how the discussion started.
You basically used War of the Worlds as an example of science-fiction that had been validated.

I just said that not only had it not been validated at all, but personnally, and I think many ppl would agree, it's not even probable at all.

It's still might be risky enough that some care has to be taken.

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by Impaler[WrG]
Sci-Fi is such a huge body of work with such wide ranging predictions that I'm fairly certain that any most of the likly future senarios have been predicted already. In hindsight its easy to find a work of Sci-fi that had a correct prediction. Its much like finding a stock market broker who can predict the stock market. Because practicaly every possible prediction is made by someone its trivial in hindsight to find one which made an acurate prediction but this don't mean that their any better then random chance.

Things like 1984, writen from a standpoint of political prediction rather then tecnological prediction are far more insightfull. I would also sight major philisophical works like Machiavelli's the Prince as time tested handbooks for predicting the future because human nature has remained a constant.

There ARE science-fiction authors (usually called hard science fiction) where they tried to get the science part as right as possible. Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke are probably the most known examples, and both of them were scientist in their own right.
Most of their "predictions" that can we can verify at this point have hit very close to home.

[pchang]

Star Trek

was so widely popular, it influenced the future. Star Trek did not predict cell phones. It influenced the designers of cell phones to make flip phones that looked like the Star Trek communicators.