james_davis_nicoll (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
james_davis_nicoll) wrote2013-03-27 10:37 am
james_davis_nicoll) wrote2013-03-27 10:37 am
An article on Stand on Zanzibar
Stand on Zanzibar is that rarity among science fiction novels — it really made accurate predictions about the future. The book, published in 1969, is set in the year 2010, and this allows us to make a point-by-point comparison, and marvel at novelist John Brunner’s uncanny ability to anticipate the shape of the world to come. Indeed, his vision of the year 2010 even includes a popular leader named President Obomi — face it, Nate Silver himself couldn’t have done that back in 1969!
Let me list some of the other correct predictions in Brunner’s book:
At which point the author goes on to mention stuff that was happening in 1969, although the author of this piece does not seem to know that. The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, for example, is a classic case of terrorism and Charles Whitman was a classic mucker.
Points for having the Soviet decline without a WWIII, though.
One thing Brunner overlooked at that by 2010, when SoZ is set, official and public support of eugenics in nations like the US and Canada would finally collapse into unsustainability. Only three years after SoZ came out, Alberta abandoned its Sexual Sterilization Act and BC followed in 1973 (they seem to have quietly destroyed the relevant records, for some reason). In the US, by the early 1980s even places like Oregon were shutting down their eugenics boards. Granted, by that point 65,000 people in 30-odd states had been forcibly sterilized.
In SoZ by contrast the eugenics laws have been made much stronger and far more draconian, in part because its view of population growth dynamics is firmly seated in the confused ideas many people had about them in those dark days.
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What confused me was the added line "What's the longest stretch been without a new US state?" after your initial statement- I thought you were being cheeky.
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