
The Predictions of Robert A. Heinlein, from the Cold War to the Waterbed - Hard_Space
https://rossdawson.com/futurist/best-futurists-ever/robert-heinlein/
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vegetablepotpie
I read Robert Heinlein's "I Will Fear No Evil". The book takes place in 2015.
In one of the chapters there were characters who were looking for a freshly
dead body and one of the characters suggested they could search computerized
medical databases because "computers were growing increasingly
interconnected".

I found that funny, I was reading that book close to 2015 and I thought, "we
already have the Internet". Then I realized the book was published in 1970,
before even the personal computer revolution. So then I realized the
incredible foresight Heinlein must have had to anticipate that people would
network computers.

In the "I Will Fear No Evil" universe computers are connected together in a
slowly growing ad-hoc network. I think this was a reasonable prediction, most
progress happens slowly and incrementally. "Revolutionary" change that happens
quickly is the exception, rather than the rule.

~~~
cgh
Computers have been networked since the late '50s-early '60s. SABRE, the
airline reservation system, went online in 1960. Heinlein would have been well
aware of networked computing.

~~~
notahacker
yep. If anything, Henlein seeing the networking of computers as something that
develops much more slowly than practical need for spaceflight has to go down
as a big miss.

cf John Brunner writing in 1970 about computer-enabled surveillance, data
theft and inventing the concept of the internet worm in 1970 (and yes, he also
wrote books with near-omnipotent talking computers...)

~~~
slivym
I think it's a bit of a stretch to be saying that Sci-fi writers were making
accurate predictions of what would happen in the future and when. Heinlein
doesn't write about space because he thought it would happen at a particular
time, it's because it opened doors into interesting stories and new ways of
thinking about things whilst relating back to what already exists. It's less
about what is going to happen and more about what's interesting. Personally I
think even today we struggle to write good stories with that cope with the
existence of instant access to every other person on the planet and every fact
known to man.

~~~
notahacker
Sure, some sci-fi writers were openly disdainful about sci-fi as prophecy.
Ursula Le Guin's famous "prediction is... not the business of novelists. A
novelist's business is lying" foreword to _The Left Hand of Darkness_ springs
to mind. But some of them took their technology more seriously than others,
and sometimes authors finding it easier to imagine a world a couple of decades
away with space battles than one with ubiquitous mobile communication devices
says things about their thought processes and the world they lived in beyond
them simply needing characters to be uncontactable for the next event to
happen.

And also, sometimes they were far more right about the details they threw in
to be vaguely believable and less on the money about what they really cared
about, like HG Wells' plot device for a world in which war was impossible
which is believed to have been what inspired Szilard to create an actual
atomic bomb (whilst the thrust of the book failed to convince enough of the
right people of the merits of a World State). And _Solution Unsatisfactory_ is
uncannily closer still...

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lonalzarus
"...Heinlein never achieved stable and consistent recognition either during
his lifetime or posthumously. His prose and ideas lacked the signature
stylistic and thematic hallmarks that were to distinguish peers such as Ray
Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, and Isaac Asimov..."

I really dislike these sorts of remarks. Heinlein is down in the records as
one of the "Big Three" authors in the golden age of science fiction. Any
Science Fiction reader knows how much of a giant he is. Just because The
Atlantic, didn't decide to declare him a singular hidden gem, or HBO didn't
make a series based on his works, doesn't mean he wasn't recognized or
appreciated in full.

~~~
baldfat
That is just an ignorant statement.

personally I only like "Starship Troopers" and would say he was one of my most
disliked SciFi writers. It just feels like a Hippie fueled throw up to see
what sticks on the walls, minus Starship Troopers and why did they make that
movie when it didn't have anything that the book had to say in it?

~~~
lonalzarus
Hippie? That novel has often been characterized as semi-fascist, and it has
pre-Anime mechas and alien bug colonies that essentially get genocided, I'm
not sure what book you were "reading".

~~~
dragonwriter
> Hippie? That novel has often been characterized as semi-fascist,

Well, the “Hippie” characterization was made by GP of the _rest_ of Heinlein’s
work (which GP does not like), not ST (of which GP approves).

It's not an uncommon reaction to some of RAH’s work, _Stranger in a Strange
Land_ particularly, but it's just as wrong as calling ST semi-fascist.

------
joshklein
Stranger in a Strange Land was always one of my favorite pieces of science
fiction, but I never knew he was the author of Starship Troopers (1959) until
a few weeks ago. Of course, I knew Starship Troopers (1997) as a goofy action
flick when I was a teenager, but I just finished reading the novel this past
weekend. The two works share little in common besides setting.

The novel is as relevant to geopolitics today as it must have been in 1959. It
poses challenging questions about whom within a society deserves authority
over others.

~~~
WorldMaker
Something I've grown to appreciate about the film is that poses similar
challenging questions in its own way. In hindsight, the film is much more in
conversation with the book than it seems at surface level (more than just
setting), because the film is dripping with satire and asks dark questions
about fascist authoritarianism. I feel like a key to the film is that it is
the best, most direct sequel to Robocop, which is also dripping with satire
and dark questions of authoritarianism that are often overlooked in pop
culture (Robocop's other sequels for instance misplace/misunderstand the
satire pretty quickly).

~~~
stormbrew
The film is a straight up criticism of the book's pro-fascist (or at least
pro-militaristic authoritarianism) undertones, honestly.

~~~
curtis
The film is a straight up criticism of fascism and authoritarianism, but it's
not a criticism of the book because Verhoeven only ever read one or two
chapters of the book.

~~~
amysox
Bear in mind that the project wasn't originally connected with Heinlein at
all, but was originally titled _Bug Hunt._ Only later did Verhoeven and
company come across _Starship Troopers,_ realize that they could actually get
the film rights, and rework their existing script to (kind of) match the
novel.

~~~
baldfat
Oh now that makes sense. I left the movie theater HATING that movie so much. I
believe I said out loud, "Did they even read the book or just the first
chapter!" My friends reply for everyone to hear, "NERD HATE."

~~~
ghaff
Films are not books. Some very good films (such as Dr. Strangelove) may be
inspired by a book or riff off it but end up in a very different place with a
very different tone. It's not a filmmaker's job to do a faithful adaptation--
although those can work too.

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candeira
Door Into Summer also predicted Roomba, but with a 50s sexist brand name:

``` What Hired Girl would do (the first model, not the semi-intelligent robot
I developed it into) was to clean floors . . . any floor, all day long and
without supervision. And there never was a floor that didn't need cleaning. It
swept, or mopped, or vacuum-cleaned, or polished, consulting tapes in its
idiot memory to decide which. Anything larger than a BB shot it picked up and
placed in a tray on its upper surface, for someone brighter to decide whether
to keep or throw away. It went quietly looking for dirt all day long, in
search curves that could miss nothing, passing over clean floors in its
endless search for dirty floors. It would get out of a room with people in it,
like a well-trained maid, unless its mistress caught up with it and flipped a
switch to tell the poor thing it was welcome. Around dinnertime it would go to
its stall and soak up a quick charge-this was before we installed the
everlasting power pack. There was not too much difference between Hired Girl,
Mark One, and a vacuum cleaner. But the difference-that it would clean without
supervision-was enough; it sold. ```

~~~
crooked-v
> Anything larger than a BB shot it picked up and placed in a tray on its
> upper surface, for someone brighter to decide whether to keep or throw away

I wish there was a Roomba with that feature.

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xutopia
It is also missing Polyamory. Stranger in a Strange Land has the protagonist
create a commune where free love abounds.

~~~
cnasc
And in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, most families are organized as a sort of
generational polygamy thing, typically with more men than women in the group
because of the relative scarcity of women in the moon penal colony.

~~~
nickff
Multiple women per man is usually referred to as 'polyandry'.

~~~
dragonwriter
Yes, but what is described is many-to-many relationships with a typically
greater than 1:1 female:male ratio, which is not polyandry which is a system
many-to-one female-to-male relationships.

~~~
nickff
In "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", it is described as a 'line marriage'. I
have read the book, and thought the idea was quite interesting. The more
recent book "Luna: New Moon" by Ian McDonald explores similar ideas (and is
also set on the moon).

I was trying to inform the parent commenter of the 'opposite' of "polygamy",
but this was apparently unappreciated on HN. On that note, I think I will no
longer be commenting on HN, due to the aggressive downvoting. I am aware of
the guideline about commenting on downvotes, but I no longer care.

~~~
dllthomas
"Polyandry" is the opposite of "polygyny". Both are "polygamy".

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colechristensen
_Stranger in a Strange Land_ was my first Heinlein novel and I finished just a
week or two ago. I am not sure if I loved it or hated it, but the direction it
went was certainly unexpected. Unsettled, is I think the primary response.

~~~
amysox
Here's a hint for you: The main character of _Stranger_ is _not_ Valentine
Michael Smith; it's Jubal Harshaw. Look at it with that in mind.

------
Symmetry
I wonder why nobody has tried to make the alarm clock-ish system form Between
Planets yet?

~~~
amysox
You mean the alarm clock system that Don uses at the hotel that has settings
ranging from "Gentle Reminder" to "Earthquake"? That'd be fun. :)

Interesting you bring up _Between Planets,_ because that shows a prediction
Heinlein made that isn't covered in this article. Read the description of the
"crazy wagon," and, specifically, the conical metal cover it has that reflects
away all incoming radar beams. Heinlein was basically describing stealth
technology in 1951, six years before Pyotr Ufimtsev's paper on the
subject...and it wasn't until 1976 that development started on the F-117, a
real implementation of his idea.

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Malic
Recommendation: The Extra Credits folks have been doing an Extra Sci Fi series
that covers the big names of Sci Fi - and that included Heinlein.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaWMe5nC9SA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaWMe5nC9SA)

I liked it - it was a great primer on an author I was aware of but didn't know
much about (yes, I need to catch up on my reading list).

------
sfRattan
Another author of science fiction who made some chillingly accurate
predictions was Hoshi Shinichi[1], whose works are generally not that well
known in the West, even among some of the broader scifi fandom. In particular,
I vividly remember reading his novella "Voice Net"[2] in college.

From the late author's (now inconsistently accessible) website:

> Shinichi Hoshi's futuristic story is set in the banally dubbed "Honeydew
> Condominium," a modern, twelve-story complex just outside the city. It
> starts at the gift shop on the building's first floor. The lackluster shop
> owner routinely uses his telephone to do just about everything: from
> counting cash register receipts to monitoring his vital signs. The story
> follows the seasons as it climbs floor to floor, watching people's lives
> change under an increasingly ubiquitous network of machines.[3]

The novella was written in 1969, so he imagines everything as spoken over the
telephone, and yet he describes: a service of personal information managers
who call you each morning with reminders including friends' birthdays and
local events, banking conducted almost entirely remotely with dubious sharing
of spending habits, and many other eerily accurate parallels to today. At the
time I was first reading the book, Facebook had just started to nag you about
your friends' birthdays.

Voice Net has a slow burn meta-narrative through its trajectory of short
stories (each chapter) that builds in a very unsettling way and is really a
treat. I won't say anything more about it here.

It's a pity his work isn't more widely known in the West, though Voice Net was
available on Apple's iBook store (which does not have a web portal I can link
to here) when I first read it and appears to be on Amazon's Kindle store[4],
though the latter may not be a translated version.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinichi_Hoshi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinichi_Hoshi)

[2]: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24751717-voice-
net#](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24751717-voice-net#)

[3]:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20180827191647/http://shinichiho...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180827191647/http://shinichihoshi.com/voice_net.html)

[4]:
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L40GY50](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L40GY50)

