The World in 2100

[Axiem]

My favourite prediction error in social issues is that Heinlein story where someone's cellphone rings, he apologises to his friends, and turns it off without answering.

I'm not sure how this is a failure; I was in a meeting today where this very thing happened. I have also been in social situations where someone's phone rings and they apologize for the interruption and turn their phone over to vibrate or whatever.

[Axiem]

Why do Asimov's stories not reflect his own predictions? Well, it may be in part because they came a long time before this speech, but I don't think that's it. I've just read a collection of his, and back in Hostess in the very early '50s he was writing about career women and the social problems they might face.

But the thing is: he was writing fiction, and for a particular audience. That audience were readers of popular pulp magazine stories in the 1940s and 1950s,

And it's been pointed out that he was also writing what the editors of those magazines wanted to print. And those editors included people like John Campbell, who had very particular views about things—including the "role of women"—and used their editorial positions to push their agendas.

(This is also why "psychic" magic is considered acceptable as science fiction while other kinds of magic are not: Campbell was into paranormal stuff and himself though psychic stuff was real, so of course it was "good enough" to put in "real" science fiction)

((An article I was referenced to a while back on the subject: https://alis.me/x/everything-wrong-with ... lls-fault/ though I don't think it's Campbell alone; he was not the only one in a position of editorial power imposing his views on aspiring authors))

[Gareth3]

I suspect that the world of the future will not be "21st century America but more liberal," but rather something much stranger and more unpredictable, whose issues are things we wouldn't even think about, and whose people don't think about our issues, or think it's ridiculous that people ever cared about such things.

I agree, the social issues will probably arise from technology that we don't have yet.

[Gareth3]

I'm not sure how this is a failure; I was in a meeting today where this very thing happened.

Fair enough. The worst social prediction I've seen wasn't actually from an SF story, but by the futurists who wrote about American generations and invented the word "Millenial". They predicted the Baby Boomers would voluntarily reduce their pension entitlements to improve the standard of living for younger generations. Hm.

[Salmoneus]

Why do Asimov's stories not reflect his own predictions? Well, it may be in part because they came a long time before this speech, but I don't think that's it. I've just read a collection of his, and back in Hostess in the very early '50s he was writing about career women and the social problems they might face.

But the thing is: he was writing fiction, and for a particular audience. That audience were readers of popular pulp magazine stories in the 1940s and 1950s,

And it's been pointed out that he was also writing what the editors of those magazines wanted to print. And those editors included people like John Campbell, who had very particular views about things—including the "role of women"—and used their editorial positions to push their agendas.

(This is also why "psychic" magic is considered acceptable as science fiction while other kinds of magic are not: Campbell was into paranormal stuff and himself though psychic stuff was real, so of course it was "good enough" to put in "real" science fiction)

((An article I was referenced to a while back on the subject: https://alis.me/x/everything-wrong-with ... lls-fault/ though I don't think it's Campbell alone; he was not the only one in a position of editorial power imposing his views on aspiring authors))

It's not Campbell alone, but Campbell really did dominate the genre - not just because Astounding/Analog was so prominent for so long, but because Campbell was a great editor who was able to spot a lot of great authors early on and mold them into his format. Even when Analog was eclipsed, it was Analog's writers who continued to be published in those other magazines.

Interestingly, on your point, the same story I mentioned, "Hostess", is prime evidence for your hypothesis. It wasn't published in Analog, but instead in an early issue of H.L Gold's 'Galaxy'. Asimov famously avoided writing about aliens, because Campbell insisted that in alien stories, humans had to be clearly unique and superior, and Asimov didn't like that idea. So it's maybe telling that in one of his first stories for a rival editor, Asimov not only had a female protagonist who's the intellectual and social superior of the male characters, but also inverts Campbell's dogma by having aliens but making humans unique in the galaxy in a bad way. (most of his early stories for Galaxy have aliens in - so there's kind of a sense that part of his creativity had been stifled under Campbell's rules and now he was free...)




Zompist: yes, and it should be admitted that the Calvin stories were published by Campbell. I seem to remmber, however, that Asimov received some criticism for his failure to understand the unique nature of the feminine psychology in creating Calvin (i.e. that she read like a man with female pronouns - she didn't swoon or anything!), which may also have discouraged him from attempting that again for a while.



EDIT: I should probably explain, I'm at this moment also in the middle of reviewing an Asimov anthology, hence the trivia...