cientists who are exploring our current universe, as well as creators of science fiction who attempt to scope out our possible prospects, like to think of themselves as futurists. But predicting the future can be an iffy art, which can be seen by anyone who takes the time to glimpse at yesterday's news. After all, Lord Kelvin, president of the Royal Society, stumbled badly when he said in 1895 that "heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." Almost 100 years later, Bill Gates also fumbled the ball in 1981 with his much-ridiculed statement that "640K ought to be enough for anybody."
An important thing to recall is that in their respective times, neither of these predictions seemed ridiculous. That being so, how much of the level-headed commentary being made by pundits today will seem just as ludicrous decades down the road? Looking at what was taken as reasonable scientific speculation a century ago is a valuable lesson in taking all seers with a certain amount of cynicism.
For example, a volume published in 1886 titled Curious Questions in History, Literature, Art and Social Life Designed as a Manual of General Information--whew!--attempted to channel scientific information for the layperson. The book contains a scientific question which has for us dwellers in the 21st century been answered, but which 115 years ago was shrouded in mystery: "How are erolites, or meteoric stones, accounted for?"
Back then, in an attempt to answer the question, the reader was told: "There have been many theories advanced as to their origin. La Place traces them to volcanic origin." But there was debate on the subject, for the author goes on to say that Professor Olmstead, on the other hand, "has shown that countless bodies of small dimensions luster together in vast rings, and revolve, as do the planets, around the sun."
The history atomic has proven comic
Another more compelling mystery of the past that illustrates how far we've come can be seen in an article by Robert Kennedy Duncan printed in the June 1910 issue of Harper's Monthly magazine. The piece was called "The Question of the Atom," and from this vantage point you might think that the essay would be about the nature of the structure of the atom, with speculation on the possibility of a nuclear-powered future, but no--it was an article debating whether such a thing as the atom even existed, and it reported on the great controversy which raced through the world's educational systems at the time:
"When about half the chemical departments of the colleges and universities are teaching chemistry on the basis of the atomic theory and the other half refuse to mention the word atom, or mention it apologetically, with a blush, and when, as is ofttimes the case, there is disaccord on the subject, and high debate in any one instructional staff, it affords a poor prospect for a future crop of investigational chemists."
Luckily , we have managed to sort that puzzle out for ourselves, but in 1910, the author was fearful that the atom might prove to be nothing more than myth and illusion, as had other concepts of the day:
"We have had a great many theories in the past, some of them great fruitful theories, such as that of phlogiston, and of caloric, and of the corpuscular nature of light, and these theories are today nothing but the discarded rungs in the ladder of man's advance. Is it possible that the atom theory is no more than these the expression of a truth in nature?"
Today's beloved truths can become yesterday's discarded illusions, and predictions can vanish as well into a nostalgia of tomorrows lost. So please--when you swallow what the prophets say, remember to swallow a grain of salt as well.
Scott Edelman started his trek to the editor-in-chief position at Science
Fiction Weekly back in 1974, when he began working as an assistant editor at
Marvel Comics. Between these two positions, this four-time Hugo Award nominee in
the category of Best Editor was the founding editor of the
award-winning magazine Science Fiction Age, and also edited SCI
FI, the official magazine of the SCI FI Channel, in addition to
Sci-Fi Universe, Sci-Fi Flix and Satellite Orbit.
