A look into the future
As we were told by countless teachers and school librarians during our childhoods, a good book can transport you to another time and place, letting you briefly inhabit another world – or a different version of the one you’re living in. And whether the books are set in the past, present or future, the authors of fiction can create their own societies, and the rules, technologies, and social and political situations that come with it. Given how much literature has been written throughout history, it makes sense that some of it would include events or inventions that were not around (or maybe even possible) when the author wrote about them. Here are nine examples of books that predicted the future.
The Parable Series
Though she died before completing the third book in the trilogy, science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler created a dystopian world in Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1998) that featured the rise of a populist demagogue. While the books were well-received when they were published, they have struck a chord with readers more recently, given some stark similarities between the society Butler created and our reality today, including global warming, extremely influential corporations, and social inequality. But the strangest parallel came in Parable of the Talents, where she writes about a conservative evangelist who runs for president using the slogan “Make America Great Again”.
George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 predicted so many aspects of the future that referring to it has become shorthand for any situations where technology threatens to control aspects of society. In fact, the term ‘Big Brother’, which refers to abuse of government power – specifically involving surveillance – originated in the book. Though it was published in 1949, Orwell described multiple technological advancements that now exist in some form. An article in Insider published in June 2019 discusses two of his sci-fi creations that are eerily similar to technology that exists today. The first example is the ‘telescreen’, which is essentially a large television used to monitor people’s private lives and is able to identify a person based on their facial expressions and heart rate: ie facial recognition software. The second example is the ‘Versificator’: a machine that can automatically produce music and literature – much like some of the artificial intelligence technology used today.