Science Fiction Predictions Brian Aldiss

About the predictions of major sci-fi English writer Brian Aldiss in his work Who Can Replace a Man including ones on space travel and nuclear technology.

PREDICTIONS FROM SCIENCE FICTION

Predictor: BRIAN ALDISS

Perhaps the leading British science fiction writer of modern times, Brian Aldiss (b. 1925) is also one of the most active. Beginning with his first story, "Criminal Record," in 1954, Aldiss has written hundreds of short stories and more than a dozen novels (including Frankenstein Unbound, Report on Probability A, and the recent best-seller The Malacia Tapestry). He was the winner of a Ditmar Award as "the world's best contemporary SF author."

Book: WHO CAN REPLACE A MAN?

First published in England as Best Science Fiction Stories of Brian W. Aldiss, in 1965.

Successful Predictions:

* Sound used as a weapon (not widespread, but the technology is available).

* Spaceflight to Mars.

Future Predictions:

* Robot servants to support human civilization.

* Robot wars after man's extinction.

* Antigravity (2500 A.D.).

* A commercial process for viewing past events on television screens; the public is offered such genuine historical soap operas as A Mother Dinosaur, William the Conqueror's Wicked Nephew, A Citizen of Crazed, Plague-Ridden Stuart London, and A Twentieth-Century Teacher in Love.

* Automatically controlled robot cars.

* Sound used to synthesize proteins from mixtures of amino acids.

* Sound waves employed to expand vegetable cells (and man's food supply) a thousand times over.

* American-Chinese War.

* Nuclear satellite bombs.

* Force shields as a defense against nuclear attack.

* Antimatter bombs.

* Venus moved by man into Earth's orbit so that the two planets will circle each other forever (the Moon having long since escaped Earth's gravitational field). Man consciously transforms the cloudy planet into a habitable paradise, making its atmosphere breathable and its temperatures bearable to humankind.

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