Which book springs to mind first?
Why, the great George Orwell of course. 1984 warned us about Big Brother and the spying of our own governments on the people they are meant to serve. You could say he predicted the future. But that wasn’t the only book he wrote. And it wasn’t the only thing he warned us about: increasing 
Many of these books are Sci-Fi or Fantasy, an authors predictions about the future. That may or may not be quite accurate. What about; An Express of the Future by Michael Verne? A book that talks about a transatlantic tunnel for trains, propelled by pressurised air. Now, we have both the Channel Tunnel and Elon Musk’s Hyperloop -invested in by Richard Branson- to move people at speed across the ground (didn’t this happen in James Bond once?).
Did the inventors of today’s devices, travel methods, gadgets, get their inspiration from these books or was it simply inevitable that it would happen and these authors foresaw it all?
Could a book predict the future existence of internet?
Without which you wouldn’t be reading this on your newspad, that you bought to fit in with your societal norms. That’s got more cookies on it collecting your data, making sure you see a different price each time you check the flights to this years holiday destination (in the company controlled allowed holiday time), showing you things from other sites you’ve visited, showing you what your friends just looked at and liked, than you ate last week. Collecting your data. Well, believe it or not, that was predicted too -including the ability to hack, and steal data- in William Gibson’s Neuromancer.
And these are by no means the only books to predict the future. But what we have to ask ourselves, is where are the books predicting the next tens years? The next twenty years? Will we see them in time to do something about where we’re headed. Or discover the next level of technological advancement so we can be the next Elon Musk. Is there a way to really predict what is coming or are we simply pawns in some matrix like experiment?
Which books have you read recently that made you think about what is coming our way? Let us know what predictions you’ve seen emerge from the minds of your favourite authors. Do you think they are possible?
Horror and Fantasy Author – Also writing as K.T. McQueen. Love Western Horror, cowboy boots, my cactus Collin, & my Demon Cat.
Moths – I hate moths, the way they flutter at your face!
plenty of predictive SF, although some more likely than others, particularly with social implications. Starship troopers springs to mind with exhortation of military service (and i say that as a veteran), the machine stops takes the reliance on tech to an extreme and the implications when it fails….
I imagine there are just as many books that predicted things that didn’t happen or haven’t happened yet and these are the ones we hold up to the light and say ‘this one predicted this thing’:) Haven’t read Starship Troopers but I might just have to give it a go.