Saturday 9 September 2017

An SF Prediction

"Grace Cormet's phone buzzed. She took it out of her pocket and said, 'Yes?'"
-Robert Heinlein, "- We Also Walk Dogs" IN Heinlein, The Green Hills Of Earth (London, 1967), pp. 92-115 AT p. 105.

"With his pocket phone [Flandry] summoned another cab."
-Poul Anderson, "The Warriors from Nowhere" IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 305-337 AT p. 326.

Thus, both Heinlein's Future History and Anderson's Technic History predicted mobile phones. "- We Also Walk Dogs" is set in 2000 whereas Dominic Flandry lives over a thousand years later and in a different timeline.

Flandry travels in the air cab to "...a meadow in a patch of woods." (p. 327) We would like to read a few more details of the scenery on the planet Vor but this is a short action story. However, it does begin with a little more information about the planet Varrak. From "...the balcony of a rented lodge on Varrak's southern continent...," Flandry sees "...a mountainside drop steeply down to green sun-flooded wilderness." (p. 306) Then the next sentence describes Flandry's athletic body! With only a few pages to tell an action story, the author must get to the point.

8 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I like it that both Heinlein and Anderson have mobile or pocket phones being used by their characters. I know it's silly to expect even the greatest SF writers to get everything right, but I recall that many time we don't see persons in the Technic stories using cell phones. Which made me think that a regrettable "anachronism." So that pocket phone used by Flandry in "The Warriors From Nowhere" pleased me.

I think Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's THE MOTE IN GOD'S EYE was the firs SF novel I read which had many people casually using what we call cell phones (called "pocket computers" in MOTE). And many mobile phones can now be used like computers.

And I think I first came across the idea of cloning, tho that word was not used, in ENSIGN FLANDRY, in 1971. At keast we are now seeing the beginnings of cloning! Another "SF" invention I read of in an Anderson story was the "aircar." I have read of companies like Moller International working on "skycars." But many problems still need to be solved before aircars come into common use.

Sean

David Birr said...

Sean:
Arthur C. Clarke's first-sold story "Rescue Party," written in 1945, doesn't use the word "aircar," but describes helicopters as filling that role:

"For the culture of cities, which had outlasted so many civilizations, had been doomed at last when the helicopter brought universal transportation. Within a few generations the great masses of mankind, knowing that they could reach any part of the globe in a matter of hours, had gone back to the fields and forests for which they had always longed. The new civilization had machines and resources of which earlier ages had never dreamed, but it was essentially rural and no longer bound to the steel and concrete warrens that had dominated the centuries before."

And the flip-open design popular for a time in cellphones appears to have been inspired by the communicators from the original *Star Trek* series. Although communicators had greater unassisted range than any cellphone I've ever heard about.

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

David,
Pcket phones in UNCLE earlier.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, DAVID!

Very interesting, this story by Clarke. But, I have my doubts that devices as large and cumbersome as helicopters will become that nummerous and widely used. I think something like the kind of skycar Moller International has been trying to develop is more likely.

Also, I have strong doubts cities would wither away that easily. For all their disadvantages they still so convenient that I doubt they will be abandoned.

Alas, I'm not familiar with Star Trek "communicators." I was never a fan of ST, so I missed many details like that.

Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

There are real advantages to having people in a given industry - the movers and designers, at least -- within "let's do lunch" distance of each other; say, half an hour maximum.

However, VR conferencing may render distance moot that way. It's in its early stages now, but good VR seems to fool the subconscious and the animal parts of the brain.

One of the early uses has been military instruction, and it does seem to give "experience reflexes" there -- the animal parts of the brain treat the threats as real.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Dear Mr. Stirling,

Virtual reality conferencing? Certain! I can see advantages in that. But most of us would probably be content with good cheap two way "televised telephoning. Videos or visiphones. That's another invention I would like to see!

Sean

Jim Baerg said...

Skype & Zoom are pretty close approximations.
Should we regard it as a silver lining to COVID that those technologies got accelerated?

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Jim!

I do. But, I think many kinds of top leaders would still prefer to meet and discuss/argue in person, where possible, the problems they have to deal with.

Ad astra! Sean