Robert Heinlein’s Famous Predictions

Posted August 14, 2025 By John C Wright

I have come across the opinion of an internet raconteur that, when it comes to futurological predictions from science fiction writers, that, from the viewpoint in hindsight as of 1997 AD, the S.F. writer Robert Anson Heinlein’s predictions for 2000 AD were laughably inaccurate.

Heinlein’s made his predictions first in the 1950 magazine article “Pandora’s Box.” (Fifty years.) He penned postscripts for an amended version for 1966 entitled “Where To?” (Thirty-four years.) And, finally, published an amended version for 1980 for “Expanded Universe.” (Twenty years.)

This proposition that these predictions are so very inaccurate is one to which I cannot agree. My own humble assessment is that Mr. Heinlein’s predictions were, on the whole, both bold and accurate; and even when inaccurate, were understandably so, that is, a reasonable guess even if off the mark, or, in other words, wrong but nowise laughably wrong.

Let us therefore comb through these predictions in order.

I rate on the following scale:

A = Bull’s-eye accurate;
B = Accurate, but not a bull’s-eye, where the opposite of what he predicted would nonetheless seem absurd;
C =  Close miss, maybe “nicked the edge”;
D = Clear miss; the arrow flew into the stands, and by accident killed the princess.

There are twenty predictions in all. Under each number, the first paragraph of bold text is the original prophecy, as given in the 1950 magazine article “Pandora’s Box” by the.

The first indented paragraph after this gives the postscripts from his amended version for 1966, “Where To?

Lastly come the afterthoughts for the 1980 version, as collected in “Expanded Universe.”

My text is plain: Mr. Heinlein’s is in bold font.

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Story Telling and Telling the Future

Posted August 13, 2025 By John C Wright

I submit that CS Lewis is the best science fiction writer of his generation, at least in terms of predicting our future.

This is not because he paid close attention to scientific progress (indeed, he makes an embarrassing schoolboy blunder in OUT FROM THE SILENT PLANET, by having astronauts wear weight belts in zero gee to increase their weight).

He paid attention to eternal things, that is, Christian teaching, and so his model of mankind was correct.

Correct model means correct predictions. Let us compare him to men who wrote during the same years, but are widely regarded as the Big Three of science fiction.

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The Golden Transcendence Ep.33: The Age is Done

Posted August 13, 2025 By John C Wright

From THE GOLDEN TRANSCENDENCE, vol. III of my debut trilogy.

In the far future, the Golden Oecumene has elevated the immortals of the solar system to untrammeled triumphs of abundance, liberty, and splendor. But, hidden by masquerade, a sinister threat arises from the dark star Cygnus X1, man’s sole exosolar colony, the long-lost Silent Oecumene.

Phaethon of Rhadamanth, bedeviled and beguiled by agents of the Lords of the Silent Oecumene, returns from exile to confront them. He must battle them in the core of the Sun, the core of his mind and memory, and at the apex of all abstraction, when the Golden Transcendence gathers all minds in the solar system into one communion, and all truths are laid bare.

The Golden Transcendence Ep.33: The Age is Done

Six more episodes to the end. I have no plans to publish any further free fiction on this site thereafter. Enjoy what I have already posted.

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Science Fiction and Simon the Magician

Posted August 12, 2025 By John C Wright

This is a reprint from an essay from 2012, but again seems timely.


Let me propose a rather long essay and a slightly droll theory to tie three books together.

The aliens behind the Monolith in Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY are the same as the aliens signaling from Vega in Carl Sagan’s CONTACT. They both are part of the Galactic Overmind seeking the evolutionary transcendence of all life, and to elevate lesser races to maturity, as in CHILDHOOD’S END, also by Clarke.

On a less droll note, I am proposing that these works, and several others, are similar in their mood and theme and treatment of the plot elements, because they tacitly agree on a central myth.

It is a mythic thread that runs through much of science fiction from even before the Golden Age, and, if I am right about what this thread is, back two thousand years and more.

Van Vogt and Heinlein and Asimov have all placed at least some of their stories in the service of this myth, the Great Myth.

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The Faith of Atheists

Posted August 9, 2025 By John C Wright

It is often said that atheists believe in a god of some sort, or make an idol of reason, and therefore all men believe in God. But scripture says that the fool in his heart says there is no God. The fool actually believes his, and he is not merely saying with his lips.

Let me attest to my personal testimony:

I used to be an atheist, and not a moderate one. I was a hard core zealot for atheism, studied in every art of logic and rhetoric to undermine and demean religion wheresoever found.

I did not believe in any god, or any supernatural being, in any way, shape or form, literally or metaphorically.

Unless a man is my psychiatrist and I am suffering mental disease, it is absurd to think another man knows what thoughts are in my conscious mind better than do I. The fallacy is called argumentum ad hominem or, in some forms, strawman.

Atheists do not believe in God.

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Fields and Energy by Hans G. Schantz

Posted August 9, 2025 By John C Wright

Our own beloved and respected Aether Czar, Hans G. Schantz, has an announcement of deep import. His masterwork in electromagnetic science FIELDS AND ENERGY (Book I) is now for sale at https://www.fundmycomic.com/campaign/825/fields-energy-book-i,

Interested readers should also follow his Substack at aetherczar.substack.com.

The final work will be three books in all. Book I explains the history and origins of electromagnetism, Book II explains where physics went wrong, and Book III goes into detail on the theory and its implications.

• Book I: Fundamentals & Origins of Electromagnetism
• Book II: Where Physics Went Wrong
• Book III: How Electromagnetism &  Quantum Mechanics Work

Dr. Schantz writes:

“My idea is very simple. Electromagnetism isn’t due to one thing, a photon that combines the mutually contradictory properties of waves and particles. Instead electromagnetism is due to two things, fields that behave like waves, and energy that – in the quantum limit – behaves like particles. Fields and energy take different space-time trajectories through our physical systems. They are two different things that work together to give rise to electromagnetism.”

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Not Tired of Winning Yet CCXLIV

Posted August 9, 2025 By John C Wright
  • Trump announces historic peace deal between Armenia & Azerbaijan at the White House, ending decades of conflict.
    I have honestly lost track of how many wars this administration has brought to an end. Five? Six? Let me look it up…
  • … Seven In less than seven months in office, President Trump has now brokered peace between:
  1. 🇹🇭🇰🇭 Thailand and Cambodia
  2. 🇮🇱🇮🇷 Israel and Iran
  3. 🇷🇼🇨🇩 Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo
  4. 🇮🇳🇵🇰 India and Pakistan
  5. 🇷🇸🇽🇰 Serbia and Kosovo
  6. 🇪🇬🇪🇹 Egypt and Ethiopia
  7. 🇦🇲🇦🇿 Armenia and Azerbaijan
32 Comments

Me Am Smart

Posted August 8, 2025 By John C Wright

Why do semi-literate intellectual parrots, reciting the latest genderfluid socialist nihilist nonsense and paradox, always claim to be smarter than Aristotle and Aquinas, Isaac Newton and Adam Smith, the Antenicene Fathers and the Founding Fathers, smarter than the all the Great Books of Western literature combined?

Radicals, freaks, and losers always pretend to be gifted with greater wit and wisdom than the normal churchgoing family men who work for a living.

No claim is more easily refuted. The brain slaves of the hive mind in unison boasts of being freethinkers.

Why? Because high IQ can be mimicked by talking jabberwocky and rejecting common sense.

If Einstein sounds lunatic for saying the speed of light is absolute ergo timespace is relative, and Marx is lunatic for saying work-value is absolute therefore morality is relative, Marx must be as smart as Einstein.

To pretend to be genius, talk like a lunatic. If you are smarter than the established society, you are hereby granted leave to violate all Ten Commandments.

But no other virtue, such as prudence, justice, temperance or courage, could ever be mimicked with so little effort. And folk would laugh at the pedo-satanist arson-loving sons of Sodom claiming any virtue that was actually virtuous.

So they claim their main vice — intellectual pride — is a virtue, and one that grants them the right to sneer at honest men.

Following Nietzsche, they pretend to be evolving into Superman, leaving the bourgeoisie ideas of good and evil behind. They are so smart, everything is backward in their thought and speech, and all morals inverted.

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Nowhither for Sale (again)

Posted August 7, 2025 By John C Wright

After a long hiatus, Nowhither is once again for sale.

NOWHITHER is Volume II of the Unwithering Realm sequence, and sequel to SOMEWHITHER, the Dragon Award winner for Best Science Fiction Novel (2016).

The tale resumes as Ilya Muromets, nonhuman immortal and would-be hero, and his friends and companions, make a hair’s breadth escape from the endless immensities of the Dark Tower, that unconquerable stronghold and throne of a monstrous, dimension-spanning empire ruled by cruel tyrants and omniscient magicians, only to find themselves trapped in circumstances even worse. They escape a citadel of blood-drinking abominations only to find themselves trapped in a chamber at the sunless bottom of the sea.

The invulnerable Ilya also realized he can be hurt indeed when he faces a dread decision pitting family love against loyalty to friends, and involves the fates not of his own world only, but all worlds.

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Not Tired of Winning Yet CCXLIII

Posted August 6, 2025 By John C Wright
  • Planned Parenthood is closing every abortion facility in Louisiana by Sept. 30 due to a lack of federal funding
  • CO2 is no longer pollution.
  • Colbert is FIRED.
  • Howard Stern is FIRED.
  • Joy Reid is FIRED.
  • Jim Acosta is gone.
  • Neil Cavuto is gone.
  • Lester Holt is gone.
  • Chuck Todd is gone.
  • Chris Wallace is gone.
  • PBS is defunded.
  • NPR is defunded.
  • USAID is gone.
  • Cancel culture failed to cancel American Eagle jeans
  • Disney removed a teenage trans girl from their show, “Win or Lose.”
  • ABC had to give Trump $17 million for their slanders about him
  • AP had to cut back 8% of its workforce.
  • Univision had to layoff several hundred workers.
  • CNN ratings are in a week-to-week death spiral.
  • So are MSNBC’s.
  • Wolf Blitzer and Jake Tapper were denied raises.
  • Rachel Madcow had to take a pay cut.
  • Justin Trudeau resigned.

 

23 Comments

The Golden Transcendence Ep. 32: Is Not Is Not Is

Posted August 6, 2025 By John C Wright

From THE GOLDEN TRANSCENDENCE, vol. III of my debut trilogy.

In the far future, the Golden Oecumene has elevated the immortals of the solar system to untrammeled triumphs of abundance, liberty, and splendor. But, hidden by masquerade, a sinister threat arises from the dark star Cygnus X1, man’s sole exosolar colony, the long-lost Silent Oecumene.

Phaethon of Rhadamanth, bedeviled and beguiled by agents of the Lords of the Silent Oecumene, returns from exile to confront them. He must battle them in the core of the Sun, the core of his mind and memory, and at the apex of all abstraction, when the Golden Transcendence gathers all minds in the solar system into one communion, and all truths are laid bare.

The Golden Transcendence Ep.32: Is Not Is Not Is

Seven more episodes to the end. I have no plans to publish any further free fiction on this site thereafter. Enjoy what I have already posted.

0 Comments

Aquinas on Power

Posted August 6, 2025 By John C Wright

A reader with the cervine yet accipitrid name of Rudolph Harrier wrote so adroit and clear a summary of the flaws of modern political discourse, that I am impelled to quote it here in full, without further comment:

Modern philosophy does not have any coherent explanation of authority. That is, why should I be morally obligated to obey the government?

The only answer that comes close to reality is an appeal to force, i.e. that if I do not obey I will be jailed or worse. But this is not an argument for why the government has the authority to order me, only why they have the ability to force me.

As tyrants have no valid authority, but they have the ability to terrorize their subjects, even this is not a coherent theory of the authority of the government.

If we say that “the government is the will of the people”, there is of course the question of whether they actually are (certainly many governments claim to do the will of the people even when they manifestly do not.) But why am I obligated to obey the will of the people in the first place? This is a particularly hard sell in the twenty first century, since students are routinely told that the will of their ancestors was to enslave, oppress, rape, pillage, etc.

Aquinas could say that a just human law is derived from the eternal law, and by this it binds the conscience. But modern philosophy cannot allow an eternal law. Aquinas can say that a law is unjust if it exceeds the power given to the one making it, but without a coherent idea of authority in the modern world each man’s “power” is what he is able to get away with. Aquinas can say that a law is unjust if it is unequally applied, since it is an affront to justice, but in the modern world “justice” has no more meaning than things like “equity”, “fairness” or “niceness.”

So to sidestep all this the early moderns needed a “just so” story to explain why you were obligated to follow a system that had no backing from God’s law, and which you never agreed to. The story of course never literally happened, and does not make sense when examined in detail, but its purpose is not as a serious argument but rather as an excuse to get you to accept the law of might makes right without realizing it.

20 Comments

Reviewer Praise for OUTLAW of the OUTER STARS

Posted August 6, 2025 By John C Wright

From the pen of Daniel M. Bensen

Outlaw of the Outer Stars by John C. Wright – Another great beach read from Wright’s pulpy homage to Star Wars. In this, the 4th book, the overarching plot is well on its way, with Lyra, Athos, and Flint getting themselves in ever deeper trouble. Most of the book we spend with Athos, himself, who is in very deep, indeed. Frogs everywhere.

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Victory in Japan Day

Posted August 5, 2025 By John C Wright

One cannot peer into nearby parallel timelines to see how alternate options really would have played out. But, as with any decision made by rational creatures, the reasonable likely outcomes must weigh heavily.

There are those who say dropping atomic bombs on Japan at the end of World War Two was not the only option.

True enough. But the other option is not pretty.

The atomic bomb was not our only option, but the alternative was to decimate Japan.

Civilians starve during sieges (see Gaza, for example). In the world were the atom bomb was not used, as legitimate military targets, Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have been bombed nonetheless, except by conventional explosives and napalm over a period of months.

And all their sister cities as well, shipyards, factories. All temples, classical fortresses, and monuments in Kyoto and Tokyo would have been burned.

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Not Tired of Winning Yet CCXLII

Posted August 5, 2025 By John C Wright
  • Today, the Justice Department has opened a grand jury probe into Russiagate. Perhaps nothing may come of it, but perhaps the process itself will generate some good. This is so different from what would have happened had not Trump won, I listed as a victory for him, and for us.
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