In 1999, Arthur C. Clarke predicted that by this time, we’d have seen the first human clone, renewed interest in space exploration, and the end of the fossil-fuel age. The man is definitely a cockeyed optimist, but I think this further proof (if any was needed) that science fiction writers are just as lousy as anybody else at predicting the future. Good science fiction isn’t about predicting the future. Good science fiction, like any good fiction, is about the here and the now.
Via Cynical-C.
To give Clarke the benefit of the doubt, though, we probably would be a little closer to those goals now if we hadn’t elected the Luddites in the current administration…
Hey, if God wanted us to use science, he would have told George W. Bush so.
I’ve been working my way through Robert Anton Wilson’s Cosmic Trigger, and according to him we were supposed to have achieved immortality and migrated to space by now as well. Oddly, his reasons for believing that at the time don’t seem too far-fetched.
Although, I suspect Wilson would say he knew we were in trouble the moment we elected the second fiddle to a chimp.