The world of future prediction has not been without its share of dire forecasts, and these have come with increasing frequency as the 20th century has worn on. The techno-utopian novels from the late 19th and early 20th centuries were replaced by what some scholars have called a “fiction of paranoia.” Some early landmarks of this genre are Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932), George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four (1949), and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (1953). In Huxley's best-selling book, society has evolved into a regimented World State where all aspects of human discourse are tightly controlled and individuality has been eradicated. Orwell's novel paints an even more sinister picture, with the governmental entity known as Big Brother monitoring each person's every move. Although the year 1984 did not prove Orwell's predictions literally correct, there was considerable debate at the time about just how far off the mark the British author actually had been.
Works such as Nineteen Eighty-four and Brave New World cannot be understood without viewing them in the larger context of the rise of totalitarianism and Communism in Europe during this period. The fears that these political philosophies inspired created a darker mood among those who wrote about the future, a pessimism that has lingered even with the collapse of Communism in Europe and Russia in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Many of today's most well-known future predictions come from television and motion pictures rather than from books. Hit movies such as Mad Max (1979) and its sequel The Road Warrior (1981), Blade Runner (1982), The Terminator (1984), Brazil (1985), and 12 Monkeys (1995) describe a grim future filled with crime, chaos, pollution, and death. In The Terminator, the human race is nearly destroyed when powerful computers, “hooked into everything,” become intelligent and turn on their creators. In these visions, technology is no longer the savior of humanity—it is its greatest threat.
Works such as Nineteen Eighty-four and Brave New World cannot be understood without viewing them in the larger context of the rise of totalitarianism and Communism in Europe during this period. The fears that these political philosophies inspired created a darker mood among those who wrote about the future, a pessimism that has lingered even with the collapse of Communism in Europe and Russia in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Many of today's most well-known future predictions come from television and motion pictures rather than from books. Hit movies such as Mad Max (1979) and its sequel The Road Warrior (1981), Blade Runner (1982), The Terminator (1984), Brazil (1985), and 12 Monkeys (1995) describe a grim future filled with crime, chaos, pollution, and death. In The Terminator, the human race is nearly destroyed when powerful computers, “hooked into everything,” become intelligent and turn on their creators. In these visions, technology is no longer the savior of humanity—it is its greatest threat.
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