Vietnam war veteran Joe Haldeman is a human time machine. Now 81 and probably the world’s greatest living sci-fi author, he has an unequalled record of predicting the future.
His 1974 thriller The Forever War imagined fictional versions of himself and his wife, Mary G@y, and flung them forward half a century, into our present day.
He was right about so much that the novel seems almost clairvoyant: culture wars, gender identity politics, the banking crisis of 2008, polarised politics, and climate change.
One character, a young Army captain called Siri (a prophetic name itself), refuses to use male or female pronouns.
He employs ‘tha, ther, thim,’ instead of he, her or him.
The question is, did Haldeman simply make good guesses? Or did he help to mould the future with his predictions?
Science Fiction In The Atomic Age argued that writers are largely to blame for humanity’s worst inventions, because scientists love reading sci-fi.
The physicists who built the first A-bomb not only drew many of their concepts from the books of novelists such as H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, but also believed their message that technological progress always led to a better world.
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Vietnam war veteran Joe Haldeman is a human time machine. Now 81 and probably the world’s greatest living sci-fi author, he has an unequalled record of predicting the future
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New series Science Fiction In The Atomic Age argued that writers are largely to blame for humanity’s worst inventions, because scientists love reading sci-fi
Archive clips from apocalyptic films and TV dramas told another story.
Throughout the hour, one theme repeated endlessly: sci-fi is warning us that the end of the world is nigh.
It opened with that scene on the beach in Planet Of The Apes, the Statue of Liberty half-buried and Charlton Heston beating his fists on the sand in despair.
Other excerpts included Gregory Peck bidding farewell to the woman he loves after a nuclear war in On The Beach, and Peter Sellers twitching maniacally in Dr Strangelove.
On a lower budget, we saw a clip from the BBC’s 1984 nuclear holocaust docudrama Threads, in which Woolworths was blown to smithereens.
In real life, thankfully, the demise of Woolies was much more mundane.
This four-part Sky Arts show was the brainchild of Adrian Munsey, who wrote, directed, produced and narrated it.
He even composed the music, with string quartets supplying a slightly ominous undercurrent for the musings of philosophers and writers such as Professor Dinah Birch and Brian Sibley.
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Throughout the hour, one theme repeated endlessly: sci-fi is warning us that the end of the world is nigh. Pictured: A scene from Planet of the Apes
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Sci-fi predictions of the future imagine a world teetering on extinction. Pictured: Peter Sellers in Dr Strangelove
Sci-fi author John Clute stated the central argument: ‘The development of the A-bomb, which was conducted mostly by European scientists who got to America to escape the terrors of history, was a science fiction solution to World War II.’
It’s a thought-provoking idea, though I wasn’t convinced. Joe Haldeman didn’t feature on the show, but his explanation to me, when I interviewed him last year, seems more likely — good sci-fi writers can deduce what will happen next by thinking logically about what’s going on right now.
If he’s right, here’s how the world will look 100 years from now, according to The Forever War: all children will be born via IVF, and everyone will be g@y, ‘apart from about a thousand incurables’.
Just remember — Joe’s been right so far.
