The internet loves to fact-check influential sci-fi writers of the past, picking apart their “predictions” for the future to praise what they got right and scoff at areas where they completely missed the mark.
True, old writers got some predictions right by depicting futuristic technology that has since made an appearance in some form. For example, in 1865 Jules Verne imagined a spacecraft landing on the moon in From Earth to the Moon, 104 years before the actual moon landing. In 1927, the German silent film Metropolis showed the first on-screen depiction of a humanoid robot. The population in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953) listens to “seashells” and “thimble radios” that bear striking resemblance to today’s AirPods and Bluetooth headsets. A popular example is the Communicator device from Star Trek, first depicted in 1966, which actually influenced the design of the first mobile phone in 1973.
Some 20th century writers depicted newly emerging technology: William Gibson imagined artificial intelligence in his 1984 novel Neuromancer, while Philip K Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), the inspiration for Blade Runner, showed us android versions of different life forms.
However, the same blogs that tout these uncanny predictions are quick to point and laugh at these same novel’s depictions of flying cars. They will hold up 2001: A Space Odyssey for its innovations, like tablets and Skype calls years before they were a reality, but sneer at its expectation for commercial space travel by the year 2001.
The truth is, examining what these works of fiction got “right and wrong” about the future is pointless. What many fail to consider is that predicting the future has never been the purpose of science fiction.
Fahrenheit 451 isn’t about AirPods, it’s about the dangers of censorship. Metropolis isn’t about showing the realistic workings of a robot, it’s about how the exploitation of the working class leads to revolution.
Science fiction reflects current cultural fears about the world we live in to make speculations, often in artistic, philosophical, and thought-provoking ways. Writers are not fortune tellers; they can only analyze the worries of the society they currently live in, look at the direction of innovation, and extrapolate from there.
HG Wells’ War of the Worlds reflected a criticism of invaders during European colonialism. In 1956, the film Invasion of the Body Snatchers reflected Cold War fears about infiltration by spies and communist sympathizers. More than anything, science fiction serves as a mirror of current times.
What about the sci fi of today? Swiss surrealist painter H.R. Giger, who created the Xenomorph design for the “Alien” films, says today’s science fiction landscape depicts narratives interested in technology like clones, AI, and robots, examining the self-consciousness and human existence. Films like Ex Machina depict consequences of taking our creations too far, while the Netflix show Black Mirror heightens this to the extreme of horror, echoing fears of what our everyday technology could do to us.
Margaret Atwood, whose dystopian Handmaid’s Tale has soured in popularity since the premiere of the TV adaptation, shuts down the expectation for science fiction writers to be predictors of the future. “I’m not a prophet,” she says. “Let’s get rid of that idea right now. Prophecies are really about now. In science fiction it’s always about now. What else could it be about? There is no future. There are many possibilities, but we do not know which one we are going to have.”
So sure, some of our current technologies reflect fictional past predictions. But we’re not living in a sci-fi future—because science fiction isn’t about predicting the future. The best science fiction uses the reality of the present to chase threads in different directions, ultimately teaching us something poignant about our current cultural anxieties.