WHIZZ-BANG and on-line—it’s the year 2000 and suddenly the future’s
sexy. Our newspapers and TV screens are full of scientists and futurologists
extrapolating the trends of the past five minutes into predictions for the whole
century. Of course the only certainty is that they’ll be wrong. Just look at
what the great writers of the golden age of science fiction thought the world
would look like in 2000.
Let’s start with Arthur C. Clarke, whose 2001: A Space Odyssey
(1968) was precisely dated and full of technical detail. At first glance, his
novel hasn’t worn well: the Moon doesn’t…
