How many times in recent years, when looking at technological developments, has someone said: “This seems like science fiction.” From the possibility of going to Mars to ever more powerful computers, from artificial intelligences (which are much debated) to new discoveries across every scientific field.
But where does everything surrounding us come from? Was it conceived from nothing, or did someone suggest and inspire that idea?
And indeed, in many cases that whisper about remote communications, robots and algorithms came from the pages of a book. Novels and short stories that at the time were considered mere strange fantasies by men and women, works that we still call science fiction today, but which, in some instances, over time have become reality.
So let us delve into those pages and those innovations, some incidental and charming, others decisive in the evolution of humanity.
Books that anticipated reality: from Orwell to Huxley
We begin with texts that managed to tell and foresee reality, some in a dystopian key predicting certain totalitarian trajectories, others in a science-fiction key, catching technological development.
In the first group unquestionably belongs the famous 1984 by George Orwell, in which the English writer and journalist describes mass surveillance (under the name of Big Brother) that is cited more and more often in news pages. Cameras, facial and vocal identification, systems capable of reading personal devices… Orwell was warning humanity—writing in the immediate aftermath of World War II—but ultimately he predicted the future (or at least part of it).
Very similar is the case of Aldous Huxley, who even before his colleague had imagined a dystopia in which eugenics is the scientific and social foundation of the entire political system. In Brave New World humans are not born, but produced and manufactured. Today, in a climate certainly incomparable, we are witnessing attempts to select DNA traits to predict the probability of rare diseases or, even, to prevent them altogether. No Alpha or Beta, but an initial modification of embryos.
Turning toward pure science fiction, it is impossible not to think of great authors like Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick. Asimov, a biochemist and writer of works such as I, Robot and the volumes of the Foundation Cycle, frequently returns in discussions about the ethics of artificial intelligence and robots with his famous Three Laws of Robotics. Between what a automaton can and cannot do, it is worth noting that we have not yet reached such development…
Speaking of Dick, it is interesting to note how in recent years systems have been developed to predict the areas most at risk of crime and the chances of recidivism for a defendant. It is evident how these new systems are “children” of the Precrime imagined by the American writer within Minority Report and adapted for cinema by Spielberg. If in the story the police could see the crime just before it happened, the COMPAS system aims to predict the possibility of recidivism (with controversial results) and certain specific algorithms seek to suggest in which zones of cities more patrols should be sent (with results that tend toward a self-fulfilling prophecy).
Again, we are faced with a literature that anticipates, accelerates time, while reality—perennial pursuer—must perfect its tools.
Ispirazioni concrete e nuovi nomi: dal cyberpunk al metaverso
Today it is not strange to encounter the terms cyberspace and metaverse. But where do they come from? Obviously from two science fiction novels.
The first was coined by William Gibson, famous for Neuromancer. If it is true that his masterpiece popularized the term, the work in which cyberspace first appears is The Night We Burned Chrome from 1982.
Jumping forward ten years, in 1992 Neal Stephenson published a cyberpunk science fiction novel, Snow Crash. Within it, an alternate universe is imagined to which users from all over the world can connect: the metaverse. In recent years many hi-tech companies have tried to develop a similar system, giving rise to a plurality of metaverses, not yet powerful enough to host all possible users.
These are not the only examples of a literature that imagines new objects and provides cues for their real names, everyday usage. Think of the so-called remote manipulators (mechanisms to operate remotely in complete safety) also called Waldo, first described within the 1942 story Waldo, or, the Impossible by Robert A. Heinlein. Similarly, think of the Taser, which probably very few know to be an acronym: Thomas A. Swift’s Electric Rifle (that is, Thomas A. Swift’s Electric Rifle). The reference is to the 1911 novel by Victor Appleton (a collective pseudonym).
Lastly, we leave behind perhaps the most common and least fantastical object, yet with a curious history: the water bed. Indeed, when a certain Charles Hall appeared in 1968 to file the patent for this resting system, the office refused to complete the request because back in 1961 Heinlein had described a prototype of it within the science-fiction Stranger in a Strange Land!
