Return from the Stars, by Stanislaw Lem, published 1961.
this is wild
What the 20th and 21st century have taught us, is that the future is shaped by science fiction.
@teenlib Very true! If you look at things in older sci-fi you find tons of things that make you go “lol I love how they thought that was futuristic back then” (or, alternatively, “OMG, WE HAVE THAT NOW!!!! :D”).
Star Trek’s a great example of this:
- The comms used in the original series for communication during away missions (basically flip phones permanently set on speakerphone mode)
- Characters arguing whether print books or ebooks are better
- Video communication (aka skyping and video conferencing)
- Replicators (the mutant baby of a Tassimo drink machine with a 3D printer)
- The Holodeck and virtual reality in general (Google Cardboard and Oculus Rift)
- Universal translators (real ones like Google Translate still kinda suck and are fairly limited, but we’ll get there!)
Then there’s all the great social commentary in ST which helped shape modern society:
- The first interacial kiss on US tvs (Kirk and Uhura)
- A black woman in a position of power in a male-dominated field (Uhura was 3rd in command on the Enterprise and part of the enineering crew)
- An entire episode dedicated to a woman’s right to choose as well as right to contraceptives
- The idea that colonialism is bad (the Prime Directive, which is all about how it’s bad to interfere with the natural evolution of other peoples and their cultures
- The idea that multiculturalism is good (Gene Roddenderry has tons of quotes explicitly stating that that’s the main message of ST)
- A male protagonist who’s openly a feminist (Kirk)
- A sci-fi equivalent of a biracial/mixed race main character (Spock)
via Tumblr http://ift.tt/2u3zcH7
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