The Popular Mechanics web site gives a list of the 10 Most Prophetic Science Fiction Movies Ever (thanks to my brother-in-law Paul for the link). At first it struck me that movies already successful in predicting subsequent science and technology must be ones that have aimed low in their predictions.
For instance, a time-machine epic is not going to make the list, because nobody’s anywhere near being able to bet rationally on a technology of time travel. To mention an example on the PM list: In Blade Runner, designer humans and flying cars are a lot more plausible and almost certainly closer to happening than time machines, yet they’re still too iffy for the movie to claim prescience. (Blade Runner‘s remaining sci-fi hook, its prediction of a dystopic megalopolitan society, mainly amplifies how things already were when the film was made.)
On the other hand, I just glanced at an article about a technique (using low dosages of anaesthetic) for wiping away traumatic memories—or at least the emotions associated with them. Made me think that the premises of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Total Recall might be closer than I had supposed. Maybe prognosticatory prowess in science fiction isn’t a matter of aiming lower but simply of getting lucky.
A few quibbles with the list: Out of sheer preference, I’d replace Short Circuit with Robocop; Road Warrior with 1984 (in the “dystopia” category) or Escape from New York (“life as prison term”); and Soylent Green—despite Edward G. Robinson’s heart-wrenching euthanasia to Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony—with Silent Running (“aftermath of environmental decline”) or The Island or Logan’s Run (“escape from Crazyville”). As I go through movie titles in my head, I’m noticing to what an extent dystopias of one kind or other dominate sci-fi. I feel a perverse need to mention Waterworld and The Postman, but we need speak of them no more.
Logan’s Run becomes, if not more probable, much more terrifying as I grow older, but I do think the saner (very well: “yet still appalling”) alternative would be to prune the junior segment of the population, allowing some lucky youngsters to realize the benefits of life experience and education. Yes, I like that a lot better, being already past the cut-off age.
On the other end of the spectrum, can anyone think of a sci-fi film that focuses on individuals who live a very long time? All I’m coming up with is Highlander, and that’s more fantasy than sci-fi. Extreme longevity has gotten a lot of press lately because of immortalist Aubrey de Grey’s cries in the wilderness, which in the end may not fall on the deaf ears of baby-boomers suddenly in the market for an escape hatch from the Reaper. At any rate, the best handling of this theme in hard sci-fi seems restricted to various Star Trek (and its spin-offs) TV episodes. I’m probably overlooking something, but life’s too short.
Finally, I must cast a vote, based purely on a philosophical argument, for The Matrix (or even more aptly The 13th Floor) as perhaps having come true already. There are a number of computationalist philosophers of mind who reason that if world-simulations are possible—and, being computationalists, they’re inclined to think that they are—then it’s likely that in the fulness of time simulations would far outstrip in number the single time-line of “real” (non-simulated) history. This would mean that the odds are prohibitively in favor of our existing, right now, in a simulation. One has to admire an empirical argument about the ultimate nature of reality. Rather short-circuits metaphysics, doesn’t it?
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