When Culture Predicts the Future

When did humanity first look up at the moon and think to themselves, “what would it be like if I could get up there?” It may have been earlier than you would think. Fifty years before NASA finally put a man up there, Polish author Jerzy Zulawski wrote a whole trilogy of novels about space explorers surviving on the lunar surface. In 1902, French director George Méliès created a version of what space travel might look like in his film A Trip to the Moon, which was itself based on the 1865 novel From Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne. Even further back in 1634, we have Somnium, which presents a magical form of space travel, and before even that is True History, a Greek satire from the 2nd Century that mocks fantastical travel novels of the time by including aliens and space travel. Now when Lucian of Samosata wrote True History, he didn’t mean it as a blueprint for the future. It was a comedy, a ludicrous idea that could only be explored in fiction. And yet, as centuries pass and artists elaborate upon his idea, and scientific knowledge advances in tandem, fiction and reality come closer and closer to overlapping until, on July 20th 1969, parody becomes reality.

Fiction has always been inspiring reality (and no, not in a “Simpsons predicted the future” way), with ridiculous sci-fi concepts like “automatic doors” and “flip phones” being commonplace or even obsolete in our modern world, when only sixty years ago they were used to make shows like Star Trek into space-age visions of a distant future. Are sci-fi authors prophets? That can’t be proven either way. What can be proven is that the majority of inventors, engineers and innovators are, and I mean this kindly, nerds. The earliest flip phones were invented by a man named Martin Cooper. Looking for the next big tech innovation in the 1970s, Cooper saw something on TV that changed the course of history; Captain Kirk whipping out his Starfleet communicator. Inspired by this image, Cooper would go on to develop the first ever mobile phones, and the rest is history.

While some inventors directly bring the fiction they love to life, others are more performative in their fandom. There’s perhaps no greater example than Elon Musk, who loves to name-drop nerd culture while promoting his “inventions”. For instance, his upcoming domestic robot has been named “Optimus” after the iconic Transformers character, despite its appearance and function bearing no resemblance at all to its namesake. More embarrassing still is his assertion on “Twitter” that his new Cybertruck was like something “Bladrunner” would drive if he were real (see above). Far be it from me to cast aspersions on Musk’s nerd credentials, but it speaks to the way that modern inventors and corporations view nerd culture. Science fiction is no longer something to be inspired by, but a tool to be used to pander to certain audience. As nerd culture continues to overtake the mainstream year on year, it becomes a more and more valuable market, hence more technologies and products being named for fictional characters in a shallow attempt to gain their custom.

Aside from inspiring technological advancements, fiction can also have a broader cultural impact, inspiring communities in unexpected ways. Returning to Star Trek, Trekkies are looked back on as being the first “fandom” in the sense that we now understand them to exist. Since the internet was not yet publicly available, Trekkies communicated mainly through fanzines and would meet at fan-organised conventions. Though the show wasn’t much of a hit, running for three seasons in it’s original incarnation, the Trekkies were dedicated and organised on a level not seen before. After a decade-long dormancy after the cancellation of the series, it was the efforts of the Trekkies that inspired studio heads to revive the franchise for movies and more shows. It was unusual for a single property to have such a dedicated fanbase, especially a property that wasn’t producing new content for such a long time. The dedication and activism of the Trekkies foreshadowed the sometimes rabid nature of modern fandom culture, such as the Snyder Cut movement, a prolonged and co-ordinated online campaign to convince Warner Bros to let director Zack Snyder finish his version of Justice League. Just like the return of Star Trek empowered Trekkies to expand as a fandom, the success of the Snyder Cut campaign encouraged those fans to demand more continuations, and when their demands weren’t met, their fandom devolved into a harassment campaign that has continued on and off for the last three years. Fandom is clearly a powerful force for cultural change and technological progress, and the medium of the internet has spread that influence further and faster than ever before.