When authors write about the future, they
have to predict what technology and life might
be like decades down the road.
While the books are often written as a metaphor
for their contemporary society, some authors
have made amazingly accurate predictions about
what modern life has actually become.
These are all fiction books that, somehow,
managed to predict the future.
10.
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
By Horace McCoy
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? is a relentlessly
bleak book that was published in 1935.
It’s about a young man named Robert who
moves to Los Angeles to get into the film
industry.
When Robert tries to get work as an extra
on a movie, he meets Gloria, a young woman
who wants to be an actress.
After failing to get jobs, they decide to
join a dance marathon.
The problem is that these marathons are death
marches that can go on for weeks.
The only breaks that the contestants get are
10 minute time-outs after an hour and fifty
minutes of dancing.
The couple that lasts the longest gets $1,000,
and all the contestants are fed.
Throughout the contest, new gimmicks are added
to liven up the marathon.
Like at the end of the night, there’s a
speed walk and the couple that comes in last
is eliminated.
Another twist that is added to the marathon
is two contestants get married, and are saved
from elimination.
Other times, celebrities show up at the marathon
for cameos.
Published in the mid-1930s, They Shoot Horses
was written as a metaphor of the plight of
people during the Great Depression.
However, today it can be seen as a frightfully
accurate precursor to reality TV shows.
In reality shows, people voluntarily do things
that are physically and mentally grueling
and/or humiliating, all for money and their
15 minutes of fame.
Reality shows are also known for using gimmicks
to make the show more exciting.
Finally, celebrities of varying degrees of
fame are known to pop up on all types of reality
shows, from Big Brother to MasterChef.
The question is, is a grueling dance marathon
any more dehumanizing than making someone
eat something like horse rectum or blended
rats, like some contestants on Fear Factor
had to do?
9.
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Infinite Jest is a long and unwieldy book;
the story is nearly a thousand pages and there
are over 100 pages of footnotes.
It’s believed that the book takes place
around 2009, in an alternate timeline where
the years aren’t numbered.
Instead, they are sponsored by companies.
For example, there is the Year of the Whopper
and the Year of the Depends Adult Undergarment.
Due to the scope of the book, the plot is
impossible to summarize in a few sentences,
but it’s mostly set at a tennis academy
and a halfway house for addicts.
Both are in Boston, which is part of the Organization
of North American Nations, or O.N.A.N.
In this reality, the United States forced
Canada and Mexico to join America as one big
super state.
There are several groups of characters in
the book and some of those people are looking
for a lost film called “Entertainment.”
The film is supposedly so entertaining that
if someone starts to watch it, they can’t
stop.
They will do nothing else but watch the film.
This includes stopping eating and drinking,
and eventually, they will die while watching
it.
In many ways, Wallace’s novel predicted
contemporary life fairly accurately.
Most notably, he predicted the way people
would consume media and their obsession with
entertainment.
In the book, people watch teleputers, which
are combinations of televisions, phones, and
computers.
People can get movies and TV shows off the
InterLace to watch whenever they want, and
then they listen to their teleputers with
white ear plugs.
Of course, all of those inventions are now
commonplace, albeit not exactly the way that
Wallace envisioned it.
Teleputers sound a lot like smart phones,
Wallace just didn’t predict that they would
be mobile and fit in the palm of your hand,
while the InterLace is a lot like Netflix.
However, Wallace thought that a system like
the Interlace would be the death of TV advertising.
Finally, the earplugs are, of course, Apple’s
earbuds.
Wallace also wrote about video phones, which
had been predicted by many other writers before
him, but Wallace had an interesting insight.
In Infinite Jest, videophones were just a
fad because people don’t like seeing themselves
on the screen.
In real life, there are many reasons people
don’t use video chat as frequently as texting.
One reason is that people don’t like seeing
pictures of themselves.
Finally, Wallace predicted the rise of Donald
Trump.
In his book, the President is the loudest
and brashest right wing sensationalist of
the mid-1990s – Rush Limbaugh.
8.
Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke
Childhood’s End,
by famed sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke, is
about an invasion of Earth by a group of aliens
called the Overlords.
The Overlords aren’t violent, but they hide
themselves from human eyes.
Through a spokesperson at the United Nations,
they say that they will reveal themselves
to humankind in 50 years.
During those 50 years, the Overlords improve
life on Earth in many ways – ignorance,
poverty, hunger, and disease are all things
of the past.
Of course, the Overlords also help advance
human technology.
One of those technologies was a type of virtual
reality that is like a movie, but it is so
realistic that you can’t tell the difference
between the movie and real life.
“The program,” as Clarke called it, would
appeal to all the senses and would allow the
person to be someone completely different
from themselves, or even a plant.
Why someone would want to be a plant is beyond
us, but that isn’t the only head scratching
prediction Clarke made.
He also predicted that in the early 2000s,
people might watch TV for three hours a day.
The only way someone would be able to watch
all the programming would be to never sleep,
as opposed to it being impossible.
So while Clarke didn’t foresee cable TV
or YouTube, he did correctly predict video
games and virtual reality.
This is pretty impressive considering that
when the book was published in 1953, televisions
in homes were just becoming common.
7.
The Plot Against America by Phillip Roth
In Phillip Roth’s 2004 book, The Plot Against
America, a well-known celebrity gets into
politics and starts to spew conspiracy theories
about minorities.
Finding his niche, the celebrity, with no
political experience, panders to racists and
anti-Semites.
Surprisingly, he wins the nomination of the
Republican Party and then goes on to win the
presidency.
As president, he aligns himself with a notorious
and brutal world leader and this creates global
tension and conflict.
He also begins to persecute the minorities
that he villainized in his campaign.
The Plot Against America takes place in an
alternate timeline and it starts in 1940.
The celebrity who is running for president
is Charles Lindbergh, who uses a platform
rife with anti-Semitism to become president.
After he’s elected, the world leader that
Lindbergh associates himself with is Adolf
Hitler.
Of course, the parallels in Roth’s book
to real life should be obvious to anyone who
wasn’t living under a rock in 2016.
But if you were in a coma or something, let
us fill you in.
Celebrity real estate mogul Donald Trump ran
for the Republican ticket with no political
experience.
His platform included racist conspiracy theories
and he spouted offensive rhetoric about minorities.
He found popularity among white nationalists
and people who were anti-immigration and then
shamelessly pandered to them.
Amazingly, he not only won the Republican
nomination, but he went on to win the presidency.
So far, as president, Trump has alienated
several of America’s allies, but talks glowingly
about
Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose government
has a horrendous record of human rights violations,
which includes state-sponsored human trafficking.
The final similarity between President Trump
and President Lindbergh is that after Trump
became President, he started to persecute
those he villainized in his campaign, specifically
Muslims and undocumented immigrants.
6.
Neuromancer by William Gibson
William Gibson’s 1984 novel, Neuromancer,
not only gave birth to the cyberpunk genre,
but it also predicted cyberspace and the internet.
The book follows Case, a former computer hacker
and drug addict.
Before the book starts, Case was fired from
his job and his central nervous system was
poisoned, so he couldn’t “jack in” to
cyberspace, which is called “the matrix.”
Millions of people can jack into the matrix,
which is a 3D virtual world that appeals to
all the senses.
One day, Case meets a mysterious employer
who says he will help Case get back into the
matrix, but in exchange, Case has to complete
an incredibly difficult hack.
In 1984, there was an internet, but only a
handful of universities used it.
Gibson foresaw that it would eventually connect
millions of computers.
Of course, the internet isn’t as immersive
as the matrix Gibson predicted (yet) but he
did predict the rise of technological addiction
and people’s need to be online.
5.
Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut’s debut novel, Player Piano,
was published in 1952, and it takes place
in the near future, 10 years after the Third
World War.
Since people were needed to fight the war,
factories were designed to be more autonomous.
Also, the stock market is controlled by a
computer that tells the factories how many
products the world needs.
Unfortunately, this automation leads to massive
unemployment.
Only managers and engineers, who have doctorates,
are employed and everyone else can either
join the Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps,
where they do meaningless work like fill potholes,
or they can join the army.
However, being in the army has kind of lost
its meaning as well, because there is nothing
to fight for.
Essentially, Player Piano is about how automation
could make life purposeless for many people.
Of course, we are a long way from the world
of Player Piano, but Vonnegut did correctly
predict the rise of automation in society,
and that it would cause people to lose their
jobs.
Many people have blamed these job losses on
China, or immigrants, but that isn’t exactly
the case.
Since 2000, America has lost 5 million manufacturing
jobs, but American manufacturing output has
increased during that time; meaning the jobs
are being lost to computers and robots, not
to other countries or people.
We’re seeing automation take over jobs more
and more every day.
Just a few examples include with self-checkout
lanes at the grocery store or McDonald’s
automated menus.
In the future, more jobs are expected to be
lost to automation.
Drones are already being tested for deliveries
by companies like Amazon.
Notably, by 2020, self-driving cars are expected
to be the norm and this will eliminate all
driving jobs.
It is expected to get so bad that, over the
next 20 years in a country like Canada, four
out of 10 jobs will be lost to automation.
So what do you want to do?
Join the army or the Reconstruction and Reclamation
Corps?
4.
Earth by David Brin
David Brin is best known for writing the book
The Postman, which was made into one of Kevin
Costner’s worst movies (and that is saying
something).
In 1989, Brin published the novel Earth, which
takes place in the year 2038.
While the novel does have a plot, the book
is more or less Brin’s predictions about
the future.
If you’re curious what the plot is, it’s
that an artificial black hole has fallen into
the Earth’s core.
Scientists have a year to fix it, or the Earth
may be destroyed.
The book has a large cast of characters and
through these characters, Brin explores what
life might be like in the future.
Currently, there is a website that keeps track
of his predictions, and there are 14 predictions
confirmed to have come true and another eight
that are likely.
Some of the predictions that Brin did get
right are global warming, rising sea levels,
and the breaking of the levees on the Mississippi
River.
Another natural disaster that is postulated
in the book that came true was the Fukushima
Nuclear Disaster.
In 1990, people knew about the internet, but
Brin accurately predicted the World Wide Web
that was invented by Tim Berners-Lee a year
after the book was published.
On the “net,” as Brin calls it, there
are pages full of hyperlinks.
Brin also thought that the net would be used
by major news outlets and citizen reporters,
along with everyday people who wanted to express
themselves.
Finally, he also foresaw spam and Trojan horse
viruses.
At the time of this list, Brin still has about
21 years to be proven right on the rest of
his predictions.
So far, only one prediction from his book
has been disproven.
In Earth, the characters haven’t discovered
any Earth-like planets and they didn’t think
they would be found any time soon.
In reality, we have found several Earth-like
planets that are in habitable zones around
their star.
The first was Kepler-186f; its discovery was
announced by NASA in 2014.
3.
The World Set Free by H.G. Wells
In The World Set Free, H.G. Wells predicted
atomic bombs, even going as far to use the
term “atomic bomb” in his book.
His bombs are uranium-based and they are about
the size of an orange.
The explosion is caused by the splitting of
atoms and after the explosion, there is corrosive
radiation left over.
What is so impressive about this is that Wells
wrote the book in 1913, 32 years before the
first nuclear bomb was tested.
The World Set Free also has an interesting
role in the technology it predicted – it
helped inspire its invention.
In 1932, English scientists had successfully
split an atom through artificial means and
the experiment didn’t show any evidence
that splitting an atom would cause a huge
release of energy.
Later that year, Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard
read The World Set Free and thought that Wells
was correct.
Splitting an atom would probably release a
lot of energy; the question was how to split
the atom.
A year later, he had a eureka moment.
Szilard said, “It suddenly occurred to me
that if we could find an element which is
split by neutrons and which would emit two
neutrons when it absorbed one neutron, such
an element, if assembled in sufficiently large
mass, could sustain a nuclear chain reaction.”
Szilard patented the idea in 1933, but he
was disturbed by The World Set Free.
He didn’t want the patent to become public
because it might fall into the wrong hands.
Something else that worried him was the rise
of Nazism.
So in 1939, he drafted the letter that was
sent by Albert Einstein to Franklin Roosevelt,
saying that Germany was stockpiling uranium.
This letter, in turn, gave birth to the Manhattan
Project.
Szilard and some British scientists worked
with the Americans, and this eventually led
to the first nuclear bombs.
Two of those bombs were dropped on Japan in
August 1945 at the tail end of World War II.
Wells died in 1946, after having seen the
weapon that he warned against used on civilians
in a war.
2.
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Yeah, you knew this one was coming.
Published in 1935, Brave New World takes place
in the year 632 A.F., which is actually 2540
A.D.
(A.F. stands for After Ford, as in the industrialist
Henry Ford).
In the future, babies are born in labs, meaning
the family unit is dead.
When they are children, they are told in whispers
while they sleep to buy things and to love
consumer products.
When they are older, the state demands that
they be sexually promiscuous, and women wear
their birth control on their belts.
No one has any real worries about life because
mood enhancing drugs are widely available
and its usage is encouraged.
Of course, contemporary society isn’t quite
to the point of Brave New World, but in all
fairness to its author, Aldous Huxley, we
still have over 520 years to go.
However, he did accurately depict several
aspects of contemporary culture, including
our consumerist-heavy society.
He also predicted antidepressants and their
prevalence in modern society.
What’s interesting about Brave New World‘s
relationship to contemporary society, is that
in 1985, writer and media critic Neil Postman
published the non-fiction book Amusing Ourselves
to Death.
In the book, Postman accurately predicts the
rise of a candidate like Donald Trump and
the prevalence of fake news in society.
In the introduction of the book, Postman explains
that he got the idea in 1984, when he was
participating in a panel on parallels between
George Orwell’s 1984 and real life in 1984.
What Postman realized is that modern life
is becoming more like Brave New World than
1984.
Postman wrote:
“What Orwell feared were those who would
ban books.
What Huxley feared was that there would be
no reason to ban a book, for there would be
no one who wanted to read one.
Orwell feared those who would deprive us of
information.
Huxley feared those who would give us so much
that we would be reduced to passivity and
egoism.
Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed
from us.
Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in
a sea of irrelevance.
Orwell feared we would become a captive culture.
Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture.”
Essentially, what Postman says Huxley was
warning us against is the dangers of being
oppressed by our own amusement; meaning we
use endless streams of entertainment to distract
ourselves and fail to engage with real life.
1.
Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner
Stand on Zanzibar is probably the least well
known book on the list, but it is the most
accurate prediction of what life would be
like in the future.
The book, which was written in 1968, follows
a large cast of characters, but many chapters
are backstory and information about the world
of 2010.
According to the website The Millions, there
are at least 17 amazingly accurate predictions
that Brunner makes about 2010 in Stand on
Zanzibar.
In the book, a major problem in society is
that individuals are committing random acts
of violence, often at schools.
Terrorists also threaten American interests
and attack American buildings.
Between 1960 and 2010, Brunner predicted that
prices would increase six fold because of
inflation; it actually increased sevenfold.
America’s biggest rival is China, and not
the Soviet Union.
It’s also a different dynamic because instead
of warfare or a weapons race, the competition
is seen in economics, trade, and technology.
As for the rest of the world, the countries
of Europe have formed into one union.
Britain is part of it, but they tend to side
with the United States, while the other European
countries are critical of American actions.
Africa is behind the rest of the world, while
Israel’s existence is still a source of
tension in the Middle East.
When it comes to the lives of everyday people,
marriage still happens but young people prefer
to have short-term relationships instead of
committing to someone long-term.
Society is also much more liberal.
Homosexuality and bisexuality is accepted.
Black people are in a better position in society,
but racial tension is still prevalent.
When it comes to technology, Brin predicted
that cars would run on electric fuel cells.
Honda and General Motors are the two biggest
manufacturers.
And even though General Motors is a Detroit
based company, Detroit is a rundown ghost
town, but they have a unique techno music
scene, which really did emerge in the 1990s.
TV channels are played all over the world
thanks to satellites and the TV system allows
people to watch shows on their own schedule.
Inflight entertainment on planes is in the
back of the seats and they feature videos
and news.
Also, in the book the characters can phone
each other on video screens, but instead of
a picture of themselves, they use avatars,
which can look like the caller or someone
completely different.
There are also laser printers, which print
documents.
Pharmaceuticals are used to help sexual performance,
and they are advertised.
Due to a societal and political backlash,
tobacco has been marginalized and marijuana
has become decriminalized.
Finally, the President of the United States
is President Obomi, which is an amazing fluke
or actual evidence that Brunner somehow saw
or experienced 2010.
In all, Stand on Zanzibar is a pretty remarkable
vision of the future.
Unfortunately, the author, John Brunner, did
not get to see many of his predictions come
true – he died in 1995 at the age 
of 60.
