Near-Future SF That Almost Forecast Actual Events

People have been writing near-future SF for decades and when the future
comes, it doesn't resemble those books. However, on occasion there have
been odd matches.

For example, I mentioned John Ringo's _The Last Centurion_ some weeks
back (published in 2008, with most of the events taking place
2018-2021). In amidst what some would consider to be a "Marty Stu" plot
are some events that kinda match actual events. A woman that I think is
a caricature of Hillary Clinton is elected President of the USA in 2016
with 48.2% percent of the vote, "it was one of those elections" (no
mention if she had a plurality of the votes or not). Hillary Clinton
received 48.2% of the vote in 2016, had a plurality of over 2.8 million
and lost in the Electoral College because it was _Definitely_ one of
those elections. Oh, yes, the woman elected in 2016 was extremely
reluctant to admit that her term in office ended on Jan 20, 2021.

There was also a pandemic started in China (which the government was
rather slow to admit). However, it started in early 2019 (if not late
2018), was not a coronavirus, but was bird influenza that jumped to
human-human transmission. It was about as dangerous to humans as it was
to birds. In my earlier post, I gave an estimate of the deaths to be
over 1 billion. After reviewing the text _tLC_, I think 4 billion would
be a better estimate.

--
"We have advanced to new and surprising levels of bafflement."
Imperial Auditor Miles Vorkosigan describes progress in _Komarr_.
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Robert Woodward robertaw@drizzle.com