FAIL
"...mobification, blogosphere, millennials and blook" - works of fiction FAIL. Try work of stupid journalists.
The Oxford University Press has come up with a list of nine words that originated in science fiction, but which have now become part of the language of science. Robotics is probably the most familiar, but Gas Giant, Zero Gravity and Deep Space are also sci-fi terms co-opted into the real world, according to the OUP blog. We …
So many (many) years ago, being a fan of Gary Larsons Far-Side Gallery, I persuaded the sysadmin at the time to let me name my Sun workstation Thagomizer - After the thing that killed Thag Simmons, of-course.
And still today, the thing that killed the late Thag Simmons is called the Thagomizer...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thagomizer
Mines the one with the spikey tail...
It has been said that all of Science Fiction is based on imagining the answers to two questions "What if...?" and "If this goes on...?". It's not about predicting the actual future. We can leave that to futurologists. Science Fiction is about imagining what might be. It allows us to dream of goals that we can reach for, or avoid fates that we hope never to see.
I'm surprised that 'Gas Giant,' came from science fiction. I thought the astronomers and astrophysicists had been making up new terms (out of necessity) for many years and the sci-fi writers used them as required. Similarly with Zero Gravity and Deep Space for that matter.
I just wish that 'tanj' had made it as a mild swear word. Tanj it!
"Much is made, generally, of the ability of Science Fiction to predict the future, though such predictions are generally assisted by the scattergun approach."
Hmmmm don't remember reading any Si-Fi story about the collapse of the banking system
Flame, I'm sure somebody will name Si-Fi story about the collapse of the banking system
Oh Really said... Hmmmm don't remember reading any Si-Fi story about the collapse of the banking system.
Pat Cadigan had a short story about a musician on a floating island complex, trying to work his way to Europe. In the story, the US economy had collapsed, due to several well placed EMP bombs. Not quite the same as a bunch of Goldman-Sachs bankers infiltrating the gov't and holding the US hostage for 2 Trillion Dollars, though.
Mine's the bindle on that stick.
> Flame, I'm sure somebody will name Si-Fi story about the collapse of the banking system
Maybe not /about/ it, but didn't Asimov's Foundation series use germanium as the financial standard because in the new semiconductor-using world it was more valuable than mere gold?
Something used longevity drugs for the financial system as well, but I've forgotten.
Someone did write about Death by Organ Transplant; and how it was a slippery slope as pressure for fresh organs caused the State to make more and more crimes punishable by death.
(Chinese "Death Vans" as report in the rags last week).
I seem to remember the hero was on the run because he has accumulated 3 parking tickets.
Not quite the same, but 'Earth' by David Brin figures a "post-secrecy" society and refers in passing to a global war against the bankers and tax havens, culminating in a nuclear attack on Switzerland...
...although the main story is about loony environmentalists and a "err, should that black hole be down there" bit of geology
[ Warning: this summary may have missed a few plot details and characterisation subtleties ]
> Hmmmm don't remember reading any Si-Fi story about the collapse of the banking system
Not bank collapse, but either the Godwhale or Half Past Human by T.J. Bass had a character who invested heavily for his retirement, but Big Earth Society strips him of his account balances just as he's ready to retire.
It's a stretch. Or is it?
Off the top of my head there is "cyberspace", from Gibson's Neuromancer and "flashmob" which came from Niven. You also have not just the name, but the concept of a countdown which was invented as a tension heightening method in Fritz Lang's film "Frau im Mond" and was picked up by the rocket scientists (some of the key figures in the German VfR were associated with the film, Lang hired Herman Oberth himself to build a real rocket as PR for the film, but he wasn't able to produce a flyable rocket on the needed schedule) as a useful way of sequencing the events leading up to a rocket launch.
As to the "scattergun approach" of SF, this is due to the goal of SF not being to predict THE future, but rather to posit a plausible future in which to set the story. To the extent that the elements of this future are indeed plausible, it is not surprising that some of those elements, or something very like them, come to pass. An additional feature aiding this process is that since a lot of folks who make a career in technologically related field are (again, unsurprisingly) attracted to reading/watching SF, some of the devices/concepts depicted there become inspirations for their efforts. What reading SF does is not to tell you what will happen so much as to prepare you for what might happen.
Two works springs to mind:
For Us The Living - Robert Heinlein.
Only relatively recently published because frankly, as a novel, it's pretty dire, being a fairly flimsy structure on which to hang a treatise and series of essays (in the form of lengthy character monologue) about the inevitable systemic failure of capitalism in the late 20th/early 21st century and it's replacement by a system based on the philosophy of Social Credit.
It was definitely worth publishing, but I can understand perfectly why it wasn't published in 1939, when it was written by a then unknown author.
Aside: One of the characters in the story is a creative dancer - she performs in her home where her performance is remotely captured/recorded over a community network and incorporated by the broadcaster into the program material for transmission.
Again, remember: Written in 1939!!
The other work that came to mind is actually a series of 3 novels - collectively known as "The Greg Mandel" series, by Peter F Hamilton. (Mindstar Rising, A Quantum Murder and The Nano Flower).
In these stories the collapse of capitalism is not a central theme, but it provides a significant element of the back story to the emergence of "Event Horizon" as a globally significant corporation with status and power to rival that of nation states.
(something which Heinlein also touched on in "Friday", where corporations dominate world organisational structure, rather than nation states)
is the "Cities in Flight" books by James Blish: "They Shall Have Stars", "A Life For The Stars", "Earthman, Come Home" and "A Clash Of Cymbals". These books depict a future in which Earth's economy has collapsed, the world has entered a permanent depression where the vast majority of people are out of work, and one by one Earth's cities construct "spindizzy fields" which lift them off the ground, turning them into giant spaceships which then travel to other planets to find work. These cities are called "Okie" cities, from the Great Depression term for someone who left their family behind to find work wherever it could be found.
Minisec - Imperial Earth by Arthur C Clarke - I would suggest that this one has happened, viz PDAs and smartphones.
Execution by organ donation - Known Space series by Larry Niven, esp. "A Gift From Earth" and "The Tales of Gil the ARM".
Not included but I like it - "Think of it as evolution in action" from Oath of Fealty by Niven and Pournell - used when describing some sort of hopeless endevour.
I also like "Stand off and nuke the site from orbit, only way to be sure" from Aliens but it's a bit difficult to use this one in everyday life without falling foul of anti=terrorism laws!
> Hmmmm don't remember reading any Si-Fi story about the collapse of the banking system
In Me2, Lister ends up owning all the wealth on Earth by virtue of having left £17.50 in a bank account before he left.
The NorWEB Federation seems to exist by using Lister's (presumably toxic) debt to them as collateral.
And even if it was an April Fools' Day joke from a Sci-Fi comedy, Earth's real economies seem to be behaving in much the same manner...