The Door Into Future

I mentioned The Door Into Summer in passing a few days ago, for the purpose of poking fun at this guy who hates cats. I meant to go back to it for more meaningful discussions. One has to do with the technology, the time the book was written versus the time it portrayed, and how the predictiveness of it turned out.

The book was written about 1956, as I recall, and it depicted 1970ish and 2000ish respectively. The crux was being screwed out of his own company and inventions, and put in deep freeze, then rectifying the situation and living happily ever after.

Well, the guy was into inventing things, primarily household and other robots or automations. Just as with other early SF, robotics came earlier and easier than the reality, yet small scale computing that it would require came - and is still coming - much later, and was not really depicted as such. Ditto with space travel, yet equipped with giant mechanical computing devices for Libby to show up.

It always makes me wonder what we, right now, are failing to predict or expect, or getting all wrong, generically and in SF.

The whole thing is vague, but highly mechanical, lots of "linkages and such." The only thing at all connected with computing it a concept of memory, in the form of Thorsen Tubes. There is "programming" to be done for each given task an all-purpose household robot might perform (which obviously precludes anything like AI), but there's no indication of what that programming might consist of, except for being lots of work.

Here it is, 2003, yet we still have nothing like Heinlein envisioned for household and other helper robots. We're making progress, but it's a slow thing. I figure robotics will be one of the Next Big Things, whether in a couple years or twenty.

Then there's Drafting Dan. Not sure it was in the blog, but I've written before how it anticipated the explosion of CAD workstations, but not the PC, the software basis for CAD, or non-keyboard input. It was still a clever guess, and even the timing wasn't far off in the scheme of things.

Then there are all the little things. No zippers in 2000? Disposable clothes? No smog? Reduced smog and pollution due to technology and the will to use it, but not an outright elimination, and not in the way he posited. Cold sleep, of course, one of the key plot devices, still not here and might never be. Then again, could be just several years away if it's not impossible without rupturing all our cell membranes or whatever other obstacles exist.

It's always fascinating to read what was expected of the future from the perspective of living in the reality of that future.

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I truly liked The Door Into Summer. I liked the way it ended - getting even with his ex-fiance and ex-business partner in a way that made it all that much sweeter.

Somehow, the predictive item from The Door into Summer that sticks in my mind is the remark that, in the year 2000, it would be possible to eat out for a total of about $5 a day if you watched your budget carefully.

Here in rural Iowa, in Y2K+3, $5 plus or minus will cover a single meal at one of the local Mom & Pop restaurants.

And I can remember, 40 years ago, when a hamburger at McDonald's was in the vicinity of 20 cents. Ah, inflation! :-)