[extropy-chat] Science Fiction comes to life

[Damien Broderick]

At 04:07 PM 7/25/2006 -0700, Stuart wrote:

>No treatise on the successful predictions of Sci Fi
>authors can be considered complete without referring
>to Jules Verne. Aside from his well known successful
>predictions of nuclear submarines

Actually, no. He "predicted" electrically propelled submarines. But 
despite rumors to the contrary, he didn't predict submarines as such 
-- at least one had already been built years earlier. His somewhat 
journalistic skill was to take somewhat daring ideas that were 
already in the Zeitgeist and enhance them a bit, buff their edges, 
and tell an adventure story that made use of them. In fact, he mocked 
H. G. Wells for inventing such novelties as anti-gravity "Cavorite", 
instead of sticking to the known facts. How boring science-fiction 
would have been had his recommendation been widely accepted.

Damien Broderick