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Cassandra Lives...

AgProv

Doctor of Disorientation Studies, UnseenUniversity
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This was in the Guardian today: a genuinely interesting bit of lateral thinking in Germany based on the fortean observation of "how did this author make such a spookily accurate prediction years before the event, even if they genuinely only believed they were writing fiction? What could be causing this, and, most crucially, how do we pick up on what fiction authors could be writing now, or in the recent past, which is coming true or will be truth within the next few years?"

We've all got our own favourite examples: the writer in the 1890's who wrote that warning fable about hubris, where the "unsinkable ship" on its maiden voyage crashes into an iceberg in the Atlantic with great loss of life. Mine is the Victorian steampunk scifi writer who, in a novel in around 1890, predicted the first powered flight in a heavier-than-air manned craft would be in 1903.

The authors of this article cite

John Brunner’s Stand On Zanzibar from 1968 imagined Europe’s states forming a collective union, China’s rise as a global power, the economic decline of Detroit and the inauguration of a “President Obomi”.

With the backing of the German government, this (funding-threatened) literature department at a German university chose to justify its own continued and cash-threatened existance by asking - how do we identify these literary predictions from the mass of writings produced each year? How do we quantify them, objectively assess them, explore the interlinks between them and correlate them to real-world news and trends? If we make it a long-term study over a period of years, where can we go with this?

This is what emerged.

the Cassandra Project
 
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This was in the Guardian today: a genuinely interesting bit of lateral thinking in Germany based on the fortean observation of "how did this author make such a spookily accurate prediction years before the event, even if they genuinely only believed they were writing fiction? What could be causing this, and, most crucially, how do we pick up on what fiction authors could be writing now, or in the recent past, which is coming true or will be truth within the next few years?"

We've all got our own favourite exanmples: the writer in the 1890's who wrote that warning fable about hubris, where the "unsinkable ship" on its maiden voyage crashes into an iceberg in the Atlantic with great loss of life. Mine is the victorian steampunk scifi writer who, in a novel in around 1890, predicted the first powered flight in a heavier-than-air manned craft would be in 1903.

The authors of this article cite

John Brunner’s Stand On Zanzibar from 1968 imagined Europe’s states forming a collective union, China’s rise as a global power, the economic decline of Detroit and the inauguration of a “President Obomi”.

With the backing of the German government, this (funding-threatened) literature department at a German university chose to justify its own continued and threatened existance by asking - how do we identify thrse literary predictions from the mass of writings produced each year? How do we quantify them, objectively assess them, explore the interlinks between them and correlate them to real-world news and trends? If we make it a long-term study over a period of years, where can we go with this?

This is what emerged.

the Cassandra Project
Hmm, not sure about this one, i would say for every line of a story that has 'sort of' come true, from a fiction novel, i would say there are billions of lines which are, as the name suggests, fiction, it reminds me of the 'give a million monkeys a million typewriters and at some point they will write the complete works of Shakespeare, its just coincidence. As with Nostradamus, its easy to look back to past writings and jam a puzzle piece that neary fits and is sort of the right colour in to the jigsaw you have infront of you.
Pierre Boulle wrote about man destroying the Earth and apes taking over in his 1968 book 'La Planète des singes' (Planet of the Apes), i cant see that happening, the apes taking over part at least, but i suppose we'll have to wait until 3978 to find out.
 
Didn't Isaac Asimov predicate a whole series of sci-fi on something like this - how the scientific study of human history allowed a supercomputer to scientifically predict the future, or something, and how a galactic empire was ultimately built on this? (could be remembering it wrong)
 
Didn't Isaac Asimov predicate a whole series of sci-fi on something like this - how the scientific study of human history allowed a supercomputer to scientifically predict the future, or something, and how a galactic empire was ultimately built on this? (could be remembering it wrong)
Psycho-history.
 
John Brunner’s Stand On Zanzibar from 1968 imagined Europe’s states forming a collective union, China’s rise as a global power, the economic decline of Detroit and the inauguration of a “President Obomi”.

This paragraph stood out because I feel that pretty much all of those events would have deemed likely to those versed in the political and economic climate of the mid to late 20th century (no mysticism etc involved). The only exception is 'President Obomi" but let's face it, the name is wrong anyway.

It's an interesting concept, but I echo other's comments around the decent probability of 'lucky hits' given all the books in existence. I'm sure even a monkey on a typewriter would produce a spooky prediction now and again. (Wiki link- 'Infinite monkey theorem')
 
Really interested to see this merited a whole article in FT415. alas, nothig raised here seems to be cited.
 
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