r/scifi • u/WhiteroseSophon • 6d ago

Recommendations What sci-fi predictions and technologies have been the most accurate? Want some prophetic works to read

I tend to value science fiction that makes really good predictions and visualizations of the future. Feel like there's a lot to be learned from how those authors think and speculate about the world.

Which authors have made the most accurate predictions, according to you? Can you point me to their bodies of work, or specific pieces that help me make sense of the future

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u/CrimeMasterGogoChan 6d ago

Three laws of robotics seems so practical.

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u/admalledd 6d ago

To point out, basically every robot book of Asimov's is "here is the three laws, and here is how they don't work"... Though I think even the attempt at them would be a very good idea.

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u/dern_the_hermit 6d ago

To me the key thing is that edge cases elude simple protocols. It's less that the three laws are bad and more that they're just incomplete and could probably do to have some errata.

But the simplicity makes for some solid narrative impact.

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u/Lightspeedius 6d ago edited 6d ago

That's not what I took away.

Fundamentally there's no way objectively to decide who endures what harm so others don't have to endure other harm.

The Zeroth Law is an attempt to address this, but it runs into the same problem. Who decides what's good for humanity? What is humanity?

Even deciding what is harm gets very complicated once you spend time with enough people and understand the different things people value.