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From sci-fi to sci-fact
What do mobile phones, the internet and Nasa's announcement that it plans to build a moon base have in common? They were all foretold by science fiction.
The dawn of the new millennium almost six years ago was a big fat letdown on just about every count: the Millennium Bug that never bit, the River of Fire that fizzled instead of roared and, of course, the Millennium Dome.
But to sci-fi fans who had grown up with dreams inspired by Saturday morning screenings of Space: 1999, the disappointment was all the more palpable. Impressionable fans of the show had been led to believe that by the end of the century we'd be living on the Moon in cream flares.
Admittedly the flares were uncannily accurate, but on all other counts, a generation had been lied to.
What a thrill then, to hear that Moonbase Alpha is finally going ahead, 25 years behind schedule. Nasa is planning a permanent base on the Moon by the mid-2020s.
Science fiction has had a mixed record in predicting the present - or "the future" as they called it back then. Take "personal communications devices". These are an everyday standard in sci-fi, from Blake's Seven to Battlestar Gallactica, and today they're an everyday reality in the form of mobile phones.
But note what sci-fi didn't predict. Their devices were always on their wrists, like watches - no one realised we would need to hold them up to our ears so that no one else can hear. No one predicted how annoying they would be on the train. And you never get Captain Kirk saying, "I'll tell Scotty to beam us up... just as soon as I can get a signal." "Have you tried holding it really high up in the air, Captain?"
Unless you are a photon yourself and only want to go a very, very short distance, teleportation is unlikely to work for you
Talking of beaming up, teleportation is one area where science fiction is still light years ahead of us. The Tomorrow People could do it, as could Daleks.
Scientists have recently achieved the teleportation of photons, which have no mass, but unless you are a photon yourself and only want to go a very, very short distance, this transport system is unlikely to work for you in the foreseeable future.
Final frontier
Other means of transport foreseen by novelists have come to pass. Aircraft, moon-landings and submarines all appeared in fiction before they were fact, the latter two thanks to Jules Verne.
HG Wells described both fighter planes and bombers in When the Sleeper Awakes, four years before the Wright brothers' project got off the ground - one fantasy it might have been better to keep that way.
Interstellar travel, however, whether by light-speed spaceship, police box or AWOL moon base, is a toughie. Though it's a basic tenet of much sci-fi literature, we have to wait until someone comes up not so much with some new technology as some new physics. So no galactic federations or warp factors for a while yet.
In fact time travel might be more likely. A fantasy staple from Well's The Time Machine to Back to the Future, the science-fact writer Paul Davies argues it is feasible, by, for example, popping through wormholes in the space-time continuum.
He denies that you could change the past, because anything you do in the past will turn out to have already happened. So you could not kill your grandmother before she gave birth, but you could presumably become one of your own grandparents (I'm not recommending this).
Robots imagined and real, from Hitchhiker's Guide and from Honda
Telescreens are another sci-fi staple. Wells foretold portable TVs and video. In George Orwell's 1984 there is a telescreen in every home, because "Big Brother is watching you" - though as it turned out, it's we who are watching Big Brother.
Instant two-way video calling is also upon us, although once again the sci-fi seers mostly omitted to mention the headaches of screen pixilation.
Robots too are a reality, although far from commonplace. They make our cars, sweep our minefields, repair our space stations, although housework is still proving something of a blind spot.
Automaton
The other obvious difference is that few real robots are human-shaped, as so many onscreen ones have been - not least to allow actors to fit inside. To a real robot, legs are just something to fall over with.
Walking on the Moon... that's just the start of it.
In fact a number of Japanese companies have now produced humanoid robots, including Kokoro's disturbingly lifelike Actroid, which (who?) is apparently available to chair meetings, and Honda's ASIMO which can run at 6mph.
Lastly, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was an electronic book that tapped into a vast database of information, invaluable for its users, "though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate". You could hardly ask for a better prediction of the internet.
So although the millennium has not brought us the space age we were led to expect, we did at least get cyberspace. It will have to do for now.
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I 
my W900i[ This Message was edited by: goldenface on 2006-12-08 08:49 ]
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Posted: 2006-12-08 09:49:37
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All a bit dissapointing i have to say,and i had such high hopes for the future when watching that (Broadcast Perfect) Video phone on Space 1999 as a child.
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Posted: 2006-12-08 17:18:33
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I thought it was great. Not too keen on the cream flares though
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I my W900i[ This Message was edited by: goldenface on 2006-12-08 16:50 ]
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Posted: 2006-12-08 17:36:46
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I wouldn't say that,thought those cream flares looked rather good on John Koening.
I would love to see a re-make of the show,that would be great!
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Posted: 2006-12-08 17:42:32
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moonbase alpha was ok but I preferred S.H.A.D.O. moonbase (from UFO)
but getting back to topic...
Russia wants to join NASA moon program
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Posted: 2006-12-08 23:04:02
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Im glad russia wants to get on board this new Moonbase plan...the more players get involved the faster it will get built,would be good if China came on board aswell....they could proberbly build a knock off Moonbase for half the cost!
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Posted: 2006-12-08 23:12:01
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well I think the more the merrier. Space should be, and willl surely one day be, for everyone
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Posted: 2006-12-08 23:13:49
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yes exactly,Moonbase should be a combined International project,after all who exactly owns the moon anyway?...I think we all do!
besides working together on such projects in space will hopefully unite people with differences back on earch.
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Posted: 2006-12-08 23:18:56
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I hope Qatar quickly gets into the action. I want some Gulf Countries with a stake in the moon before it becomes the 53rd state or something.
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Posted: 2006-12-09 01:59:39
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Residentevil Posts: > 500
I think that money could be spend more wisely.
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Posted: 2006-12-09 17:22:25
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