[ih] Fiction->History

[Bill Ricker]

On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 10:27 PM, Larry Sheldon <larrysheldon at cox.net>
wrote:

>
> Fiction->History
>
​There are two sorts of SciFi (aside from the Fantastic) - those that
aren't facts yet​

​but likely will be if we persevere, and ​those that could be facts if we
screw things up even worse. Those writing near-term SF are well advised to
leverage  William Gibson's aphorism "The future is already here - it's just
not evenly distributed" to sniff out what is in the labs and the pockets of
the early adopters.


> ​
> In 1977 there was a book titled “The Adolescence of P-1” (Thomas Joseph
> Ryan)
>

I thought I remembered this was either serialized or first appeared as a
novella in one of the magazines before release as a book, but Google finds
no proof of that? Odd.
   There was a flurry of pre-cyber-punk AI / rogue-programmer stories in
Analog in the late 70's, i recall one featured a female hacker but i forget
the title, and that it was the month before or after P-1 so it seemed a
trend.  ​

There are plenty of listicles that catalog SciFi stories/concepts/widgets
that became reality -- partly through invention of the engineering fact
being easier after invention of the idea as fiction, as testified to by the
inventor of Cellphones being inspired by Kirk's (Roddenbery's) communicator
-- but has this been treated in the full academic style as
literature-and-society  or history of science? I don't know. ​I am remiss
in not surveying academic treatment of ​ SciFi as LitCrit in between
Padlipsky's thesis (latterly of MULTICS and this I-H list) and Gannon's [1]
/Rumors of War/ [2] and Pournelle's SIGMA [3], which respectively study and
practice influence of SF on military and government policy.
    If there isn't yet an academic study of the influence of P-1 and the
following Cyber-punk movement on Silicon valley et al in any/all aspects
(network, OS, application, User interface), it's due, it's ripe.
    If we don't get an answer on this list, i can ask Chuck Gannon and
network through my other SF&F friends to see who if anyone is working such.

​(I do highly recommend /Rumors of War/, particularly if you admired MAP's
literary writing style as i do and are interested in social impact of early
English-language SciFi on the military.) ​

​[1]​ http://www.charlesegannon.com/BioTop.html
[2] http://isbn.nu/9780742540354
[3] ​
http://www.onthemedia.org/story/129496-science-fiction-in-the-national-interest/transcript/
​

-- 
Bill Ricker
bill.n1vux at gmail.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/n1vux
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