Part 3 (1/2)
She lived through it She survived
Our prospects need not dise, at Gettysburg - or trudged across the Plains You and I are here because we carry the genes of uncountable ancestors who fought - and won - against death in all its forh We'll survive Most of us
We've lasted through the preli up
But it's not for sissies
The Last thing to co out of Pandora's box was Hope - without which men die
The gathering ill not destroy everything, nor will the Age of Science change everything Long after the first star shi+p leaves for parts unknown, there will still be outhouses in upstate New York, there will still be steers in Texas, and - no doubt - the English will still stop for tea
Afterthoughts, fifteen years later -
(a) And noe are paying for it and the cost is high But, for reasons understandable only to bureaucrats, we have almost halted development of a nuclear-powered spacecraft when success was in sight Never mind; if we don't, another country will By the end of this century space travel will be cheap
(b) This trend is so o that I aes in sex relations are evident all around us - with the oldsters calling it ” it for granted Surface signs: books such as ”sex and the Single Girl” are smash hits; the formerly-taboo four-letter words are now seen both in novels and popular e; courts are conceding that nudity and semi-nudity are now parts of the o much farther and is now barely started
The most difficult speculation for a science fiction writer to undertake is to iine correctly the secondary implications of a new factor Many people correctly anticipated the coh to predict that everyone would use them and the horse would virtually disappear But I know of no writer, fiction or non-fiction, who saw ahead of ti habits of Americans which would result prim and the oral contraceptive merely confire in sex habits the autoet in existence today which will prove to be equally revolutionary in soadget, by name and by function - but we don't knohich one it is nor what its unexpected effect will be This is why science fiction is not prophecy - and why fictional speculation can be so much fun both to read and to write
( c) I flatly stand by this one True, we are noorking on Nike-Zeus and Nike-X and related systems and plan to spend billions on such syste True, it is possible to hit an object in orbit or trajectory Nevertheless this prediction is as safe as predicting tomorrow's sunrise Anti-aircraft fire never stopped air attacks; it si at the bottoe will be as crucial in the co shi+ps controlled empires The nation that controls the Moon will control the Earth - but no one see these days to speak that nasty fact out loud
(d) Since 1950 we have done so in several theaters and are doing so as this is written, in Viet Nam ”Preventive” or ”pre-emptive” war seems as unlikely as ever, no matter who is in the White House Here is a new prediction: World War III (as a major, all-out ill not take place at least until 1980 and could easily hold off until 2000 This is a very happy prediction corace ht postpone disaster still longer We were much closer to ultimate disaster around 1955 than we are today - much closer indeed than ere at the time of the Cuban Confrontation in 1962 But the public never knew it All in all, things look pretty good for survival, for the tiood a break as our ancestors ever had It was far erous to live in London in 1664-5 than it is to live in a city threatened by H-bombs today
(e) Here I fell flat on , nor is any now in prospect - instead the ancient, wastefulconfirree of our backwardness in this field is hard to grasp; we have never seen a modern house Think what an automobile would be if each one were custom-built from materials fetched to your home - ould it look like, ould it do, and how much would it cost But don't set the cost lower than 100,000, nor the speed higher than 10 m/h, if you want to be realistic about the centuries of difference between the housing industry and the autoh wishful thinking ) the power of human stupidity - a fault fatal to prophecy
(f) In the an transplants - and the probleenetics have enetic code” It is a tiny crack, however, with a long way to go before ill have the huer before ill be able to ”tailor” huene manipulation The possibility is there - but not by year 2000 This is probably just as well If we aren't bright enough to build decent houses, are we bright enough to play God with the architecture of huested that I had been too optimistic on this one - but I still stand by it It is still thirty-five years to the end of the century
For perspective, look back thirty-five years to 1930 - the American Rocket Society had not yet been founded then Another curve, similar to the one herewith in shape but derived entirely from speed of transportation, extrapolates to show faster-than-light travel by year 2000 I guess I' FTL shi+ps by then, if ever But the prediction still stands without hedging
(h) Predicting intelligent life on Mars looks pretty silly after those disraphs But I shan't withdraw it until Mars has been thoroughly explored As yet we really have no idea - and no data - as to just how ubiquitous and vaned life alaxy; it is conceivable that life as we don't know it can evolve on any sort of a planetand nothing in our present knowledge of chemistry rules this out All the talk has been about life-as-we-knohich means terrestrial conditions
But if you feel that this shows in ive up thoats and zitidars and beautiful Martian princesses until forced to, I won't argue with you - I'll just wait
(i) I e number thirteen; the ”cent” I meant was scaled by the 1950 dollar But our currency has been going through a long steady inflation, and no nation in history has ever gone as far as we have along this route without reaching the explosive phase of inflation Ten-dollar haers?
Brother, we are headed for the hundred-dollar haer
But this is only an inconvenience rather than a disaster as long as there is plenty of haer
(j) This prediction stands But today physics is in a tre up faster than it can be digested; it is anybody's guess as to where we are headed, but the wilder you guess, the more likely you are to hit it lucky With ”ele about half the number we used to use to list the ”iram just to keep track of the players At the other end of the scale, ”quasars” - quasi-stellar bodies - have coer than telescopic astronomy used to be; and we have redrawn our picture of the universe several ti it more complex - I haven't seen this week's theory yet, which is well, as it would be out of date before this gets into print Plasma physics was barely started in 1950; the sae of physics - and it's an anarchy