Ever see the cartoon The Jetsons?

The talked to each other on TV phones.

Ever used a webcam to chat with a friend?

Science Fiction (the good ones) have been written by people who are themselves professors in Astronomy or Quantum Physics or one of those lines of study that have to do with space exploration and the like. Some Science Fiction writers are Historians, who have projected our world history into the future, showing us what could happen to us if we continue the way we have been. It is a way to look at the possibilities of the future in a fun way.

Frank Herbert in his Dune series projected our present-day religions and beliefs into the future, and showed how each of the major ones might have evolved, integrated or merged. Isaac Asimov (the MASTER and my favourite Sci-Fi writer) created 2 alternate universes of the future. One is where we are the only intelligent species and we eventually populated the whole universe with the human species in a huge galactic empire. It showed how the various human tendencies that appear in large groups of people could eventually create different cultures on different worlds when they can develop in isolation. He introduced the idea of a Positronic Brain for robots, and pioneered the idea of the 3 Laws of Robotics, which, right now, the scientists of our age are taking as a given, as if he had written it as an academic paper instead of in a fiction book. Isaac Asimov was among the first (if not THE first) to write of robots as more than monsters bent on killing their creators.

Anyway, Science Fiction is a fun way of opening ourselves to the infinite possibilities of the future. Provided, of course, its GOOD Sci-Fi. Good in the sense that the theories postulated have been well thought out, the science (even though not possible today) hangs together logically, and the people act like people actually do in real life (albeit after evolution of several centuries).

You should read it. I recommend Isaac Asimov’s “I, Robot” collection or, if you want to go into it for the long haul, Asimov’s Foundation series. They’re really cool.

While talking about science, the example of the famous sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke is exemplifying. This British author is also a famous inventor and he is the last surviving member of what was sometimes known as the “Big Three” of science fiction, which included Robert A. Heinlein and Isaac Asimov.

In 1939 Arthur C. Clarke joined the RAF, eventually becoming an officer in charge of the first radar talk-down equipment, the Ground Controlled Approach, during its experimental trials. Later, his only non-science-fiction novel, Glide Path, was based on this work.

In 1945, a UK periodical magazine “Wireless World” published his landmark technical paper “Extra-terrestrial Relays” in which he first set out the principles of satellite communication with satellites in geostationary orbits – a speculation realized 25 years later. During the evolution of his discovery, he worked with scientists and engineers in the USA in the development of spacecraft and launch systems, and addressed the United Nations during their deliberations on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.

Sci-fi author Robert Anson Heinlein did set a high standard for science and engineering plausibility. Within the framework of his science fiction stories Heinlein repeatedly integrated recognizable social themes: The importance of individual liberty and self-reliance, the obligation individuals owe to their societies, the influence of organized religion on culture and government, and the tendency of society to repress non-conformist thought. He also examined the relationship between physical and emotional love, speculated about unorthodox family relationships, and the influence of space travel on human cultural practices.

In another category of sci-fi, called “dystopia,” authors such as Aldous Huxley, Ray Bradbury, George Orwell, and Ayn Rand have been hugely influential in the sense that the books they wrote–respectively Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, 1984, and Atlas Shrugged–describe the excess of future highly authoritarian societies, thus seriously limiting the odds to see such model of societies from happening.

Best seller Atlas Shrugged, written by Ayn Rand in 1953, is still unnoficially censored in France and in some other countries where it is impossible to find this novel either translated or even in English.

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