Science fiction involving automobiles-whether autonomous, sentient, or flying-proliferated at a seemingly exponential rate throughout the 20 th century. Other technological innovations Verne wrote about include video broadcast news, tasers, and flying cars in his 1904 novel Master of the World. This not only calls to mind modern deep-sea submersibles but also the current movement toward hybrid and fully electric vehicles, which are considered prime candidates for eventual automation. Based upon two real-life submarines-a hand-crank sub from 1800 and a compressed-air mechanically-propelled sub from 1863-Verne opted to have his Nautilus powered by electric batteries. “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” by Neuville from Wikimedia CommonsĪmong Verne’s technological imaginations was the submarine Nautilus in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1870). Authoring over 60 books, Verne himself disputed he was a prophetic futurist, instead claiming he performed extensive research into what was scientifically possible given the knowledge of his time. Writing from 1850 to 1905, Verne is credited with predicting many inventions of the modern age. Many observers cite Jules Verne as a founder of modern science fiction. During war, they drop rocks similar to modern ICBMs. Similar to modern maglev trains, Laputa floats by magnetic properties over the rocky realm of Balnibarbi. The circular island has a circumference of 4.5 miles and 200-yard baseplate of adamantine-a word derived from Greek meaning any very hard substance, which has become a common name for imagined materials in science fiction. In 1726, Jonathan Swift wrote Gulliver’s Travels, which includes a flying island named Laputa. However, during centuries prior, other manifestations emerged, such as robot horsemen, mechanical birds (both discussed in part 2), and flying sea vessels. Thus, it seems many aspects of the contemporary mobility revolution remained indirectly imagined until the early 20 th century. It’s worth noting that modern automobiles didn’t appear until 1885, with the invention of the Benz Patent-Motorwagen in Germany, and didn’t become widely available until the early 1900s with the Ford Model T. “Laputa” by Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard Grandville (1803-1847) from Wikimedia Commons More’s Utopia gave rise to the pervasive dystopian/utopian subgenres of today, which often include various imaginings of the mobility revolution, including autonomous and flying vehicles, advanced artificial intelligence, and pervasive sensing systems. While the novel doesn’t include technological advancements, a key element of modern sci-fi, it includes plenty of socio-political change. While the term utopia has since come to mean an idealized or perfect society, More derived the word from the Greek οὐ (for not) and τόπος (for place), meaning no-place, or an impossibility. “Utopia” by Abraham Ortelius (1527–1598) from Wikimedia Commons On the island of Utopia, communistic aspects, such as no private property and communal goods shared by all, intermingle with authoritarian elements like lack of privacy and universal slavery-with the enslaved including foreigners, criminals, and, oddly, locals who forget to carry their passports while traveling. In 1516, the English author Thomas More wrote a puzzling satirical novel in Latin titled Utopia. So, how has science fiction imagined various aspects of that revolution, from driverless vehicles to artificial intelligence to human-robot interactions? And what can we learn from such imaginings? Sound familiar? Such elements are strikingly similar to the pursuits of hardware, software, and engineering companies working diligently toward the mobility revolution. Blade Runner the unexplained paranormal of science fantasy, including mid-20th-century pulp rags like Startling Stories or Weird Tales.ĭespite such diversity, many observers agree on a few basic elements, including technological advancement, scientific discovery, societal change, and future prediction. Modern science fiction has evolved over centuries to include countless cross-genres and subgenres: the retrofuturism of steampunk, often attributed to Jules Verne the dystopian bleakness of tech noir, i.e. A scanned cover by Weird Tales, Inc from Wikimedia CommonsĪsk a dozen sci-fi fans to define the characteristics and time period of the genre and you’ll likely get more than a dozen different answers.
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