PRDICTIONS IN SCIENCE FICTION

                        PREDICTIONS IN SCIENCE FICTION

It is a well-known fact that writers of science fiction have been known to predict the future. In the story which will follow is a series of posts, in which I predict the past.

Two famous writers of science fiction have shown foresight in predicting the future in their work, Issac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke.

Asimov, in his work, saw the move from incandescent bulbs to fluorescent bulbs and on to LED bulbs. Also, the introduction of robots in his work is well-known.

Arthur C. Clarke had a host of predictions of the future in his work. In the world of computers, he predicted the Yk2 scare in the 1990 novel The Ghost from the Grand Banks.

In Clarke’s 1972 novel Rendezvous with Rama, astronomers were involved in a defense system against asteroid collisions with Earth, detected an alien spaceship. The world is now concerned with a collision with an asteroid and the U.S. has already sent a spacecraft on a successful mission to nudge an asteroid and changed its path.

Clarke also predicted the various uses of satellites. He saw groups of satellites being used for data transmission, phone calls and TV transmissions.

This article is a preamble for my short story, The Superior Species. In this story, through cloning, neanderthals are produced with surprising results. I first submitted this story on July 21, 2006. Since then, the view of neanderthals as brutes has been changing.

It’s been found that neanderthals buried their dead, made jewelry, and manufactured tools. And may have been able to speak.

What really caught my attention was the cover of The New York Times Magazine section published on January 15, 2017. It depicts an obvious caveman holding the hand of a modern-day man. The caveman is wearing a T shirt with the saying, I’M WITH STUPID, with an arrow pointing to modern man.

I will be offering The Superior Species in a series of posts. Hope you follow and enjoy the story.