
1987 Time Capsule Predictions by Sci-Fi Writers About 2012  - joshuahedlund
http://www.writersofthefuture.com/time-capsule-predictions
======
3pt14159
By far the most accurate:

DAVE WOLVERTON

In 2012 We will see:

1) That economic cycles caused by rises in technological levels will begin to
level out—countries that have a falsely inflated economy will be forced to
export their technologies to third-world countries where people are willing to
work for less money. This will lead to a situation where knowledge, the key to
our technologic success, will be spread across the world. We'll see rapid
decreases in starvation levels, but will still be plagued with political
turmoil.

2) Men's Rights—We will see a reaction to the women's movement. Men will
demand to be portrayed by the media as the sensitive, caring creatures that
they are. They will also demand equal rights in custody battles where children
are seldom awarded to a father because our society chooses to believe a mother
is a better care-taker by nature.

3) Introduction of x-ray microscopes in the early 2000's will lead to rapid
progress in gene splicing. Look for rapid growth in medicine and mining, and
food production. We may also see bacteria being engineered to simulate parts
of the immune system (which could cure immune disorders such as AIDS and
allergies).

~~~
aprendo
The second point is technically accurate – but does it really count if it’s a
delusional movement by a few crazies that is in no way comparable to to the
women’s movement and mostly based on a completely weird worldview (all the
while many of the legitimate goals of the women’s movement are far from
reached)?

~~~
lunarscape
Feminists were also branded as delusional mentally ill people when they
started fighting for their rights. Your comment shows exactly why these
movements need to exist and the prejudices they have to overcome. Are men
fighting for basic access to their children in a biased legal system
"crazies"? What about those trying to tackle the massive problem of young men
committing suicide? What about those campaigning to give boys the same
protection from genital mutilation as girls? Every movement has radicals and
unfortunately they tend to be the loudest. Consider the running controversy
over anti-transgender feminist groups (eg. [1]). They're loud, get lots of
attention but hardly represent the majority.

[1]
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/25/radical-...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/25/radical-
feminism-trans-radfem2012)

~~~
aprendo
All MRAs I’ve ever heard were downright weird in their worldview. There are
some problems worth fighting for (nothing comparable with what women faced and
still face), sure, but that doesn’t seem to be their focus. Their focus seems
to be demonizing feminists and derailing. (Let’s quickly talk about custody:
feminists and MRAs could actually be marching in exactly the same direction:
The root cause of the problem are strict gender roles, women are for taking
care of children, men are for working. But no, feminists are to blame. MRAs
also love using warped statistics, but that is very much besides the point.
There is no reasonableness in that movement.)

The text implies that some sort of MR movement would spring up as a widespread
reaction to feminism (and it doesn’t have any comparable issues to fight for,
it doesn’t have the numbers, it doesn’t have the intellectual depth nor the
academic backbone). It did spring up as a tiny reaction to feminism. Wikipedia
tells me that the movement has its roots in the 1970s, so it’s not like this
would have been something completely new in 1987. It’s hard to say, but I see
no reason to believe that the MR movement is that much bigger than it was in
1987. And it still defines itself as a reaction to feminism. Which makes about
zero sense. All the issues they are fighting for were not caused by feminism.
Far from it. Many feminists will be perfectly capable of recognizing them as
valid problems. (But, again, that’s very much besides the point.)

~~~
kbolino
Feminism has a long and storied history, to which its "intellectual depth" and
"academic backbone" has, and continues to be, largely irrelevant. It is not
monolithic, and represents a diversity of views unified only by the idea that
women should stand up for themselves. The modern custody situation, which
admittedly has become more nuanced since the 1980s, is at least partly a
result of strains of feminism that embraced motherhood.

While I can agree that, at present, many of the "MRA" seem like "weirdos"
tilting at windmills, there is nothing inherently wrong with having strong
advocates on both sides of a discussion.

~~~
aprendo
It's not two sides, though. That makes no sense. The issues MRAs are
campaigning for are not issues feminists are campaigning against.

------
cjensen
Fears of War, Population Explosion, American Decline, and Japanese Ascension
with some anti-Reagan sentiment mixed in. Pretty much a lesson in what pop-
culture fear look like in 1987, and every one of them turned out to be a non-
issue.

This ought to give one pause and great skepticism when evaluating today's pop-
culture fears. Of course, just because an idiot picks (c) on an SAT question
doesn't mean it's wrong.

~~~
eevilspock
Yeah, but whose to say that the prevalence of those fears didn't have a hand
in making them a non-issue?

What else but a fear of war motivates us to avoid it? Would China have
instituted its one-child policy without a fear of population explosion, a
policy which arguably is one of the most important factors in its rapid rise
(as compared to India, for instance)? Perhaps the seeming inevitability of
Japan's dominance made them complacent while simultaneously stripping
American's of theirs?

~~~
dennisgorelik
Instead of investing in building family Chinese invest in building career +
retirement fund?

~~~
smsm42
Now the only thing they need is to institute western-like welfare state system
where people have very low private savings rate and rely almost completely on
pay-as-you-go defined benefits global pension funds - and they'd be left very
surprised and wondering what hit them so hard when everything was going so
good just so short time ago.

------
DanielBMarkham
The lesson here is "don't ask sci-fi writers to predict the future."

Seriously, these guys are doing what we all do: making some kind of linear
estimate based on past data. Usually these estimates end in some sort of
crisis. No, we are not out of oil. It's debatable whether we've even reached
peak oil, which I doubt. The U.S. has a shot at becoming a major oil
_exporter_ if we don't screw it up. No, hunger and disease are no more
widespread and rampant than they were then. If anything, things have probably
gotten a little better. No, we are not colonizing the moon or Mars. Our space
program is still barely getting started. No, everybody isn't an illiterate
slob watching CGI dramas, but that day still seems to be fast approaching, at
least for the western world.

The internet really took the species on a hard turn from where we all thought
we were going. Even idea of a hive mind where billions vegetate using computer
stimulus wasn't considered. Everybody thought that the individual would stay
the same and technology would evolve around them. What's happened is much more
interesting: the idea of the unique individual is changing as more of the
things that make us unique are being recorded and shared. Technology is not
transforming the world; technology is transforming _us_.

ADD: An interesting title to this article might be "It's the end of the world
as we know it, and I feel fine."

~~~
drostie
Well, I had the opposite conclusion. Lots of the linear estimates were more or
less right, and the ones that were wildly wrong were _not linear enough_.

Like, here's a wildly wrong one: "Probate and copyright law will be entirely
restructured by 2012 because people will be frozen at death, and there will be
electronic means of consulting them. Many attorneys will specialize in
advocacy for the dead." What is this guy anticipating? He's anticipating that
biocomputing will explode up from approximately 0 to the level where we blur
the line between life and death.

What about "now in 1987, we would beg you to forgive us. We have burdened you
with impossible debts, wasted and polluted the planet that should have been
your rich heritage, left you instead a dreadful legacy of ignorance, want, and
war"? The author has totally neglected the idea that perhaps future presidents
would create debts, pollution, ignorance, and war at scales which just blow
those original scales out of the water, so as to seem irrelevant by
comparison. Instead he predicts a total reversal of human nature, expressed in
a "faith that you have saved yourselves".

If they've shown sci-fi bias towards computers, that has actually to some
extent held up; if they've shown sci-fi bias towards space, that has not. The
slow-and-incremental predictions are not so bad.

~~~
sjwright
The intriuging thing about the JACK WILLIAMSON quote is that his apology from
1987 sounds like something one might write today for an audience in 2047. He
didn't predict the future; he (quite accidentally) predicted that which
continues to plague the contemporary psyche.

------
tokenadult
My elementary school included a class that put a time capsule together during
the 1968-1969 school year, with pupil predictions of the year 2001. In the
year 2001, the time capsule was opened up. We were quite concerned about air
pollution and, wouldn't you know, running out of petroleum, and both turned
out to be less of a problem than we anticipated. I expected more progress in
the United States in "race" relations than there actually has been, but it is
a fact that the United States is experiencing an ongoing reduction of "race"
consciousness that is hard to imagine to people who remember the days of legal
segregation by state law.

<http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/14635780-post3.html>

I was interested to see that another page on the site hosting the submitted
article has a description of the late L. Ron Hubbard

<http://www.writersofthefuture.com/lrhbio>

that perhaps needs some fact-checking.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Ron_Hubbard>

<http://www.villagevoice.com/related/to/L.+Ron+Hubbard/>

[http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2012/07/25/bay-area-
great-g...](http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2012/07/25/bay-area-great-
grandson-of-l-ron-hubbard-blasts-scientology/)

~~~
runn1ng
The site looks like 100% Scientóogy propaganda. I know this may sound
paranoic, but you can really recognize it by the home page and the way it's
written.

~~~
fferen
I know, right? Reminds me of this: <http://www.thrivemovement.com/>

------
jwecker
2037

Some promising technologies will still be struggling along in 2037. Others
have disappeared or been replaced completely. No matter how miraculous and
marvelous the advances that have happened though, society will have managed to
consider them mundane and probably inevitable. I don't know what quantum
computers and machine learning will have allowed by 2037- (better weather
prediction? deep mathematical truths?), but I suspect that the things people
think about the most, like how to have meaningful relationships and fulfilling
work, will have only been minimally affected. On the other hand, I predict
that some people thinking about those things now will have found,
individually, exactly what they were looking for.

Each generation will be less mature (at least until it reaches the same age as
the last). Each new generation (there will have been a couple by 2037) will,
despite its immaturity, regressiveness, and destructiveness, manage to yield
forth individuals who inspire and transform, who rise above petty concerns and
a world brimming with distraction and reveal something new about the capacity
of mankind.

In short, the fundamental struggle will continue between technology that
exalts our knowledge and capacity, and human nature that debases and waste
them.

Existential threats to mankind will still occasionally surface. The threat of
genocide, tyrants who oppress and reign in terror, the Earth groaning under
its abuse as we attempt to listen better, to act better. But, as always there
will be pockets of peace and prosperity where others can sit and take a moment
to write an entry for 2062.

~~~
shabble
For those taking this seriously: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect>

~~~
jwecker
kind of. They are obviously vague predictions, which is kind of a cop-out /
cheating. But after reading how silly all the specific predictions seemed,
even when correct, I got to thinking about things with a strong historical
precedence- things that would likely remain true. The language used makes it
sound kind of like the platitudes you would see in Barnum statements, but
those lead to the Forer effect because some number of them _do_ apply to lots
of people (leading people to confirmation bias and to assigning some weight to
a non-existent authority). I hope that the imprecision in my predictions make
them boring and obvious because they're true for the majority of 25-year spans
in recorded history, not because they pretend to be tailored specifically
toward individuals reading or toward this coming 25 years.

~~~
tripzilch
Be sure to print it out and put it in some sort of capsule though. It'll get
lost in this HN thread and it's always fun to read back such things 25y later
:)

------
chewxy
Some of these are very salient (Pohl), and some not so.

Brilliant points (Orson Scott Card):

> We must count ourselves lucky if anyone has leisure enough in 2012 to open
> this time capsule and care what is inside. In 2012 Americans will see the
> collapse of Imperial America, the Pax Americana, as having ended with our
> loss of national will and national selflessness in the 1970s. Worldwide
> economic collapse will have cost America its dominant world role; but it
> will not result in Russian hegemony; their economy is too dependent on the
> world economy to maintain an irresistible military force. ...

And this one by Roger Zelazny, pretty spot on until...

> It is good to see that a cashless, checkless society has just about come to
> pass, that automation has transformed offices and robotics manufacturing in
> mainly beneficial ways, including telecommuting, that defense spending has
> finally slowed for a few of the right reasons,

I stopped reading at "defense spending has finally slowed"... no one could
have predicted George W. Bush I guess

This one is almost completely opposite:

>Multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's disease will be effectively cured.
However, AIDS will not yet have been controlled. It will have become the
leading cause of death worldwide with millions of new cases each year.

~~~
cema
Not predicted Bush? Not predicted 9/11, more like. Which is strange too: one
of my first impressions of the US was how vulnerable the country was.
(Resilient too, but that was not surprising.)

~~~
Vivtek
9/11 was a bee sting. Bush is the one that instituted the subsequent
anaphylactic shock.

~~~
smsm42
This has nothing to do with Bush specifically - virtually no policies linked
to 9/11 were reversed since the end of Bush presidency, and some actually
became worse (e.g. TSA). 9/11 raised the level of public concern with
terrorist threats (real or imagined) so pretty much anybody would follow the
pass of the least resistance and do roughly the same. Doing otherwise would
require extraordinary vision and extraordinary power of persuasion to sell it,
which none of the current politicians possesses.

------
redthrowaway
"Because we will be in a trough between 20th-century resources and 21st-
century needs, in 2012 all storable forms of energy will be expensive.
Machines will be designed to use only minimal amounts of it. At the same time,
there will be a general expectation that a practical cheap-energy delivery
system is just around the corner. Individuals basing their career plans on any
aspect of technology will concentrate on that future, leaving contemporary
machine applications to the less ambitious or to those who foresee a different
future. The most socially approved-of individuals will constitute a narrowly
focused aristocracy, and will be at the mercy of dull functionaries and
secretive rebels who actually perform the day-to-day maintenance of society.
It should be noted that most minimal-energy devices process information and
microscopic materials, not consumer goods. The function of "our" society may
depend on processing information and biotechnology to subjugate goods-
producing societies. These societies may be geographically external, or may be
yet another social stratum within central North America. In either case,
crowd-management technologies will have to turn away from forms that might in
any way impair capital goods production. Social regimentation will then have
become so deft that most people will regard any other social milieu as
pitiable. "

Most were quaintly charming, but that was right on. I'm surprised that fewer
authors mentioned the information revolution as being a large force in
society.

~~~
maxerickson
Portable energy isn't particularly expensive.

The cheap labor in Asia isn't particularly subjugated (and Western nations
produce more material goods in absolute terms, never mind U.S. agriculture).

What's left?

~~~
ricardobeat
Portable energy is _extremely_ expensive. The Tesla Roadster's battery pack
costs upwards of $30k and weighs half a ton. Lithium AA batteries cost
~$400-500 per kW.

~~~
illumin8
A gallon of gasoline costs ~$3.50 and weighs a few pounds.

~~~
jcromartie
And for the curious: contains 36 kWh.

~~~
demallien
Or, to be more precise, when burned in a modern car engine, produces 36kWh. If
I pop it into my handy iMatterToEnergy(tm), I get substantially more...

~~~
smsm42
If you had that, you could produce energy directly from air, or from waste, or
from whatever. The point of gasoline is that the energy is cheaply extractable
by chemical means (which means it does not require extraordinary energy levels
to unlock and very expensive machines and protections to operate).

------
Dove
I find it curious that more than one of them predicted a decrease in literacy.
Indeed, the opposite seems to have happened.

When I was in college, my English professor vowed that he would make us better
writers by forcing us to write an essay _every_ _single_ _night_. And it
really worked.

Yet we live in a world where people are writing, constantly writing, in a way
my English teacher could barely have dreamed of. High school kids, debating
endlessly with a hostile audience every day, are turning into _frighteningly_
persuasive writers all on their own.

~~~
rmc
People thought that TV & radio would take off, both media that don't require
literacy to use/consume/watch. However the internet means everone has to read
_AND_ write in order to interact. People have to be able to string words
together. People have to be able to write to have friendly.

Computers have probably done lots for literacy.

You can see it a little bit now when much older people who don't use computers
a lot, write things. They aren't very literate, probably because they haven't
written as much as young people have.

------
paul
This is wonderful. Their confident pessimism brightens my day :)

~~~
Auguste
I was surprised at how pessimistic they were. Did the future really look that
bleak 25 years ago?

~~~
tjmc
The threat of nuclear conflict was very real during the Cold War. I remember
my teacher asking the class (in 1984) who thought that a nuclear war was
"likely in the next 10 years" and virtually every hand going up. Some teenage
angst there perhaps, but it was as high in the collective conscious then as
climate change is now.

~~~
waterlesscloud
I was lucky enough to grow up a few miles from an Air Force Base. When we did
the "duck and cover" training thing, our science teacher told us it wouldn't
matter because we'd turn to ash almost instantly anyway.

Recently there was mention of a poll of evangelical Christians and some large
percentage thought the rapture would happen in their lifetime.

Honestly, that's pretty much literally the same psychology at work as those
who believed in impending nuclear holocaust then and imminent climate doom
now.

~~~
brc
There's been a bunch of mini-dooms along the way as well, everything from y2k
causing planes to drop from the sky to terrorists attacking cities more
frequently.

I think it's in peoples nature to mentally take trend lines straight up, or
even exponentially up. So, if there were x nuclear warheads in 1987, then they
assumed it would be 100 * x in 2012.

The same pattern is at work with the climate now, as you've pointed out. Those
who speak of the largest catastrophes get the most airtime, and it's a self-
reinforcing cycle. Any room full of teenagers will inevitably predict the
world will be uninhabitable by their 40th birthday, when in reality it will
probably be much the same.

------
damian2000
This one stood out for me:

"Japan will be the central economic power in the world, owning or controlling
a significant part of European and American industries. This "economic
dictatorship" will be beneficial to Japan's client states, since Japan
benefits by keeping its customers healthy and wealthy. Indeed, a peaceful and
prosperous world community will owe its existence to this Pax Japanica."
--SHELDON GLASHOW

Replace Japan with China and he's spot on. The idea has also been given the
name "Chimerica" by some economists
[<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimerica>].

~~~
cjensen
China has indeed replaced Japan as the bogeyman in our tales of decline, but
does not Santayana have something to say about how this tale ends?

~~~
damian2000
Outside of the US, demand from China is mostly seen as a kind of saviour,
bringing with it huge economic development, e.g. especially in Africa, Brazil
and Australia.

------
ilamont
Frederik Pohl's essay is great. By 1987, he had been writing science fiction
for nearly 50 years and I think had become embittered by the course of 20th
century history. Read _Gateway_ (which I think came out that same year) to see
his vision of 21st century Earth -- humanity lives on an overpolluted planet,
with only a tiny portion of the population able to have access to "Full
Medical" and live in clean, domed cities.

He's still alive, incidentally. And has turned to blogging:
<http://www.thewaythefutureblogs.com/>

------
brimanning
"The American economy will have experienced a gentle yet relentless decline.
Our children will not live such comfortable lives as we do. The spread between
the rich and the poor will have grown, and crime will have become so prevalent
as to threaten the social fabric. The rich and the poor will form 2 armed
camps. Most automobiles and heavy machinery will be manufactured in Japanese
owned planets located in America. Yet, agriculture and higher education will
be our most successful exports. There will be no fast trains connecting
American cities, but a network of levitated superconducting trains will be
under construction in Western Europe and in Japan." - Sheldon Glashow

This was the most stunning part of the predictions as it's far more negative
than what truly is the case, yet points to many truths and is what many could
say about the next 25 years.

------
zavulon
> I would also like to take this opportunity to plug my new book, to be
> published in both computerized and printed versions in time for 2012
> Christmas sales—but I've not yet decided on its proper title. Grandchildren
> of Amber sounds at this point a little clumsy, but may have to serve.

Oh how I wish this was the case...

------
reasonattlm
Gregory Benford's notes are perhaps the most interesting, given his present
position on the board of Genescient - a company that mines the genetics of
longevity:

<http://www.genescient.com/about/board-of-directors/#gbenford>

Interesting for the pessimism, that is. Every age and sub-age and decade and
year, and so on down, has its seeping pessimism - yet here we are, still.

Humans are good at foreseeing, identifying, and solving problems. Yet despite
the vast evidence of that trait at work in our history, recent and otherwise,
our capacity for progress and success is greatly underrated in every present
day in comparison to our capacity to build problems.

~~~
mattgreenrocks
Pessimism is helpful when it motivates us towards the right types of change:
those that better humanity as a whole.

Optimism can have its day when we've moved past our tribalistic, petty
natures. Until then, we have work to do.

------
joezydeco
When I was a kid I bought a paperback copy of The People's Almanac: The Book
of Predictions[1]. The book is mostly wacky, but over the decades I would
thumb through it from time to time and catch something that someone got right,
although mostly by accident. The psychics that were interviewed were _way_
off. The scientists? They did a lot better. It's a fun read if you can find a
copy.

[1]
([http://books.google.com/books/about/The_People_s_Almanac_Pre...](http://books.google.com/books/about/The_People_s_Almanac_Presents_the_Book_o.html?id=07XMYmhoX2YC))

------
toomuchcoffee
_Most Americans are barely literate, think in images rather than symbols, and
think the future is something that will happen to somebody else…_

Right on the money.

~~~
majormajor
You left out the "just as today…" which rather changes the tone.

~~~
toomuchcoffee
Nah, just making it shorter and easier to parse.

------
waterlesscloud
Doom! Gloom! Disaster Just Around The Corner!

How depressing. Not just the worlds they paint, but that some of the brightest
minds were (and are) trapped into such a negative way of looking at the
future.

~~~
vacri
In 1987 the cold war was still going strong, and the threat of Mutually-
Assured Destruction was palpably felt. The industrialised world was divided
into two sides and it affected politics quite powerfully. In 1987 there
weren't the public glimmerings of the fall of communism - the Berlin Wall was
torn down in '89.

Since the fall of communism ended the two-superpower cold war, industrialised
nations simply don't feel the threat of being sucked into a massively
destructive third world war.

Don't forget also that many of those minds write about things happening in a
post-apocalptic timeframe :)

~~~
eevilspock
waterlesscloud was probably a child or not born yet, so we who were alive and
old enough back then sound just as weird as the World War and Great Depression
generations sounded to us. S/he will be in the same boat 15-25 years from now
:)

~~~
waterlesscloud
I was 19 in 1987. :-)

Old enough to be aware of the voices of Gloom and Doom even then.

There's always an excuse to believe in them. And there's always a choice to
see it otherwise.

------
Foy
TL;DR - By 2012 we'll have moon bases and missions to Mars if AIDS doesn't
wipe us out first.

They really had high hopes for space exploration. Shame that never happened.
:(

EDIT: Oh this was a good one (thankfully not at all accurate):

"TIM POWERS: Probate and copyright law will be entirely restructured by 2012
because people will be frozen at death, and there will be electronic means of
consulting them. Many attorneys will specialize in advocacy for the dead."

------
allaun1
I think Sheldon Glasgow was the nearest to accurate. Most of their predictions
were almost 100%. SHELDON GLASHOW

Written on the Eastern Air Shuttle between Boston and N.Y.

What will life be like in the year 2012? There will have been no nuclear war,
and the threat of such a war will have been removed by the mutual nuclear
disarmament of the major powers. SDI, Reagan's ill advised Star Wars program
will have come to nothing.

Japan will be the central economic power in the world, owning or controlling a
significant part of European and American industries. This "economic
dictatorship" will be beneficial to Japan's client states, since Japan
benefits by keeping its customers healthy and wealthy. Indeed, a peaceful and
prosperous world community will owe its existence to this Pax Japanica.

Many diseases will be curable: diabetes and gout, for example, will be treated
by 'genetic engineering' techniques. Multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's
disease will be effectively cured. However, AIDS will not yet have been
controlled. It will have become the leading cause of death worldwide with
millions of new cases each year.

The American economy will have experienced a gentle yet relentless decline.
Our children will not live such comfortable lives as we do. The spread between
the rich and the poor will have grown, and crime will have become so prevalent
as to threaten the social fabric. The rich and the poor will form 2 armed
camps. Most automobiles and heavy machinery will be manufactured in Japanese
owned planets located in America. Yet, agriculture and higher education will
be our most successful exports. There will be no fast trains connecting
American cities, but a network of levitated superconducting trains will be
under construction in Western Europe and in Japan.

------
beefman
I reviewed these and counted 49 distinct and falsifiable predictions, of which
I judged 11 correct (about 20%). Optimistic predictions fared better (30%)
than pessimistic ones (10%). Zelazny did best with 4/8, followed by Benford
and Glashow. Full accounting here:
<http://lumma.org/temp/1987-2012_Predictions.txt>

------
kposehn
I find it rather gratifying - even comforting - that by and large their
predictions missed the mark by a wide margin.

Predictions are the product of your current experience - your time until now.
Many brilliant people try and predict the future, but in the end the future is
up to us.

------
ekianjo
SOme lesson to learn from this: most people are wrong, and totally wrong about
the near future (provided 25 years is considered "near").

That should say a lot about not listening to what's being said currently about
what will happen in 25 years from now.

------
sampsonjs
Worth a read: Pitfalls of Prophecy: Why Science Fiction So Often Fails to
Predict the Future , <http://www.locusmag.com/2009/Westfahl_Predictions.html>.
Why do they think that the fact that they write science fiction makes it worth
listening to their predictions anyways? Well, besides the genre inferiority
complex, which requires its hacks to pretend they're prophets, so they can
feel important.

------
mratzloff
What's always interesting about these kinds of predictions is not the
predictions themselves, but the window into the hopes and fears of people at
the time. It's all here: Japan as an economic superpower, space travel, AIDS,
poverty, hunger. Now compare to predictions that sci-fi writers today make
about 2037 and you'll have a similar window into our own hopes and fears--many
of which will be just as accurate, at least in the next 25 years.

------
nl
Lesson: Don't be pessimistic.

The disaster scenarios you imagine are inevitable are really just the worst
case, and the things that actually problems aren't thing you can predict.

------
ionwake
GREETINGS TO 2012:

If we had a time-phone, now in 1987, we would beg you to forgive us. We have
burdened you with impossible debts, wasted and polluted the planet that should
have been your rich heritage, left you instead a dreadful legacy of ignorance,
want, and war.

Yet, in spite of that, we have a proud faith in you. Faith that you have saved
yourselves, that you are giving birth to no more children than you can love
and nurture, that you have cleansed and healed your injured planet, ended
hunger, conquered crime, learned to live in peace.

Looking toward a better future for you than we can see for ourselves, we trust
that you will use your computers and all your new electronic media to inform
and liberate, not to dominate and oppress, trust that you will employ the arts
of genetic engineering to advance the human species and make your children
better than yourselves. We know that you will be inventing new sciences that
would dazzle us, opening brave new frontiers, climbing on toward the stars.

We live again through you.

Sincerely,

Jack Williamson

------
dennisgorelik
All these writers clearly had no clue about the future. Even "Back to the
Future" was much closer in spite of being a comedy.

------
smsm42
What is surprising in these predictions is how near-sighted many of them are.
Basically most of the writers just took popular topics of the day and wrote
along the lines "will it get better? will it get worse?" Very few tried to
think outside of the box and imagine future where their current concerns won't
be concerns at all and instead different hot topics will arise. I do not blame
them - it's almost impossible feat to achieve, but I still would expect from
scifi writers a better detachment from politics de-jour and current fears and
concerns.

I like Silverbergs and Zelazny's ones the best. Too sad Zelazny didn't live to
present us that 2012 Christmas Grandchildren of Amber.

------
Aloha
Goes to show, just how much easier it is to write about a future, than it is
to predict the future.

Though on whole, if you grab a statement out of each (almost) you have the
world of today.

------
xiaoma
My favorite of the bunch, Roger Zelazny, was also most accurate:

 _"ROGER ZELAZNY

It is good to see that a cashless, checkless society has just about come to
pass, that automation has transformed offices and robotics manufacturing in
mainly beneficial ways, including telecommuting, that defense spending has
finally slowed for a few of the right reasons, that population growth has also
slowed and that biotechnology has transformed medicine, agriculture and
industry—all of this resulting in an older, slightly conservative, but longer-
lived and healthier society possessed of more leisure and a wider range of
educational and recreational options in which to enjoy it—and it is very good
at last to see this much industry located off-planet, this many permanent
space residents and increased exploration of the solar system. I would also
like to take this opportunity to plug my new book, to be published in both
computerized and printed versions in time for 2012 Christmas sales—but I've
not yet decided on its proper title. Grandchildren of Amber sounds at this
point a little clumsy, but may have to serve"_

* We're mostly a cashless society using cards and electronic payment -- CORRECT

* Automation has transformed offices and robotics manufacturing in mainly beneficial ways -- CORRECT

* Defense spending has finally slowed for a few of the right reasons -- MIXED : True as a ratio, but not in absolute $$$

* population growth has also slowed -- CORRECT

* Biotechnology has transformed medicine, agriculture and industry—all of this resulting in an older, slightly conservative, but longer-lived and healthier society possessed of more leisure and a wider range of educational and recreational options -- CORRECT on nearly all counts

* ...in which to enjoy it—and it is very good at last to see this much industry located off-planet, this many permanent space residents and increased exploration of the solar system. -- WRONG

* I would also like to take this opportunity to plug my new book, to be published in both computerized and printed versions in time for 2012 Christmas sales—but I've not yet decided on its proper title. Grandchildren of Amber sounds at this point a little clumsy, but may have to serve -- ...

Despite all the other excellent predictions, his death came much earlier than
he forsaw :(

------
dhughes
I grew up in the 80s and the one main thing I can recall is the ever present
fear of nuclear war.

If I had made a prediction back then I would say there would certainly be some
sort of nuclear event at some point in the next twenty or thirty years.

------
perfunctory
> Bases on the moon, an expedition to Mars…all done.

How badly we underperformed.

~~~
stevejabs
No one here to blame other than political agenda. I fully feel we could have
been in preparation for a humanized mission to Mars at this point. However,
we've wasted too much time funding war and whether or not abortion and gay
marriage should be legal instead. It's actually quite sad.

------
fluxon
"Doom, doom, doom-doom, doom, doom ... doomie-doomie-doom, doomie-doomie-
doomie-doom ... doom, doom. The end." \-- _The Doom Song_ , GIR, _Invader Zim_

------
brianchu
Gregory Benford: "Berkeley, California will have a theme park devoted to its
high period—the 1960s."

He's right. Berkeley has People's Park. As for the theme, well...

------
unimpressive
What's interesting to me is how some made assumptions that didn't turn out to
be true but got much correct anyway.

Algis Budrys stands out in particular.

------
calinet6
"Berkeley, California will have a theme park devoted to its high period—the
1960s."

This pretty accurately describes Telegraph Ave.

------
bguthrie
A wonderful link. My votes are: Wolverton for prescience, Silverberg for
wisdom. Your AUs per year may vary.

------
perfunctory
> Most Americans are barely literate, think in images rather than symbols

Any comments on this?

~~~
itmag
It rubbed me the wrong way too. I'm a visual thinker myself, and I don't
consider myself barely literate :p

Then again, I guess it could be interpreted in a different way...

------
jonhendry
Huh, no predictions that Tom Cruise would still not be exhibiting any OT
powers.

------
gwern
As much as I love Gene Wolfe, his predictions are just embarrassing.

------
TechNewb
Orson Scott Card wins.

------
dkhenry
Is this the same L. Ron Hubbard of Scientology fame ?

~~~
dsr_
Yes. Before that, his career was SF pulp writer. Not a great one, mind you.
Religion pays better.

------
cubicle

      Isaac Asimov       Died 1992
      Gregory Benford    Alive
      Algis Budrys       Died 2008
      Gerald Feinberg    Died 1992
      Sheldon Glashow    Alive
      Frederik Pohl      Alive
      Jerry Pournelle    Alive
      Tim Powers         Alive
      Orson Scott Card   Alive
      Robert Silverberg  Alive
      Jack Williamson    Died 2006
      Gene Wolfe         Alive
      Dave Wolverton     Alive
      Roger Zelazny      Died 1997
    

A lot more of them have survived to be embarrassed by their predictions than I
had thought.

~~~
jpdoctor
> A lot more of them have survived to be embarrassed by their predictions

Predictions are hard, especially about the future. -- Yogi Berra

But seriously, I was in my mid-20's in 1987 and not a lot of these predictions
seem outlandish having lived through that time.

------
derleth
It seems that the major pass-time among people who read time capsule
predictions is to count the most idiot things as "hits" as hail the people
with the most bizarre ideas as prophets.

In that spirit, here's a few "hits" for everyone here:

"A new world order will emerge from famine, disease, and social dislocation:
the re-tribalization of Africa, the destruction of the illusion of Islamic
unity, the struggle between aristocracy and proletariat in Latin
America—without the financial support of the industrialized nations, the old
order will be gone." -- Orson Scott Card

"America and the U.S.S.R. preserve an uneasy accord, each testing the other's
will within well-defined limits. [snip]Vestiges of reading, writing, and
spelling remain in the curricula of the public schools. Those who can read a
few hundred common words are counted literate. The schools train their
students for employment—how to report to computers and follow instructions.
[snip] There is little sex outside marriage, which normally includes a legal
contract. A single instance of infidelity is amply sufficient to terminate a
marriage, with damages to the aggrieved party [snip] The population of the
planet is below six billion." -- Gene Wolfe

"Most Americans are barely literate, think in images rather than symbols
[snip] Berkeley, California will have a theme park devoted to its high
period—the 1960s. [snip] There will have been major "diebacks" in overcrowded
Third World countries, all across southern Asia and through Africa. This will
be a major effect keeping population from reaching 10 billion." -- Gregory
Benford

~~~
itmag
_Most Americans are barely literate, think in images rather than symbols_

This rubbed me the wrong way. Thinking that way does not make a person stupid
or illiterate.

