Re: Near-Future SF That Almost Forecast Actual Events

On Sun, 19 Jan 2025 08:58:12 -0000 (UTC), Charles Packer
<mailbox@cpacker.org> wrote:

On Sat, 18 Jan 2025 14:29:26 -0000 (UTC), Christian Weisgerber wrote:
>

On 2025-01-18, Robert Woodward <robertaw@drizzle.com> wrote:
 

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.

 
It's hard to beat the Québécois TV show _Épidémie_, which was presumably
shot in summer 2019, aired from January to March 2020,
and presented the fictional outbreak of a coronavirus epidemic in
Montréal.

>
You could go back to 1979, where the movie "The China Syndrome"
seemed to prophecy the Three-Mile Island accident.

"Seemed to prophecy" nothing.

When it was released, Three-Mile Island was already an event, and the
wisdom of releasing /The China Syndrome/ so soon after was questioned.

Most of the concern was alarming the public by including a line of
dialog suggesting that a meltdown could cause the reactor to descend
to the core of the Earth, with catastrophic consequences. Which, of
course, did not happen, either at TMI or in the film.

If you like, you can point out that it was, no doubt, written and made
before TMI. But I don't think that works as a prophecy, since nobody
knew about it.

In 1886 W. T. Stead wrote a novel that seemed to prophecy the
Titanic disaster. But that was so far ahead of the event that
it might not have registered in public consciousness as
prophecy. But he did go down with the Titanic, so he gets
extra points...

--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"