They tell you a lot about Issac Asimov and Ronald Reagan.
Orson Scott Card’s was scary close. The others... not so much
Lots of pinkos in that group.
Dave Wolverton should’ve written more.
Two years from the fall of the Berlin Wall and none of them saw it coming. Ronald Reagan was smarter than the whole bunch.
Dave Wolverton did the best.
The majority seem to worship the idea of a cashless, one-world ruled hell.
The average American will be a pathetic round-bottomed weeble-wobble with the attention span of a gnat and glued to the television, living their miserable lives vicariously through the laboratory designed celebrity entertainers they see on the tube. Bizarre body modifications, unusual piercings, and tattoos covering the entire body will be the norm. An African Marxist strongman will seize control of the United States. Flesh-eating Zombies will arise and begin to consume the living. The hardy survivors who haven't become mind numbed robots will cause firearms and ammo to fly off the shelves.
Non-psychic predictions for 2012 from 25 years ago.
I await eagerly for this book.
One thing about twenty five year predictions is that most people who make them want to predict huge changes in human nature and the conditions of the world. If you say "things will be pretty much the same as now with a few changes. It costs millions of dollars to put a person in orbit, so there won't be any offworld colonies. Wars will still be fought because people will be as greedy and petty as ever. Things are improving from Ehrlich's mad rantings in the 60s, so there won't be any great starvation." you won't be invited back to make more predictions next year.
Funny, the correct answer would have been... 2012 will be pretty much the same as 1987 except the music will be worse and there will be far more computers and cell phones....
One of my idle fantasies is to buy a used copy of that same book and go through the then-experts' predictions - and not grade them gently, either. Just goes to show you, the future really is unpredictable.
It’s fun to see the bulls-eyes. Zelazny got the death of cash and e-books. Benford got the economy and came pretty close on text speak. Feinberg nailed medical imaging.
*ping*
Most of these guys are left-wing nutbags. Asimov’s answer, however, is so flippant that I can’t help but think he was being sarcastic, perhaps taking a jab at those who, at the time, blamed everything on Reagan, from AIDS to starving peasants in Africa.
Robert Silverberg is my favorite author.
BFL
So was Asimov being a tool or was that sarcasm?
Orson Scott Card...the re-tribalization of Africa
Well, he got that one correct, only he probably didn’t know it would take place in large US urban centers!
Bm