A fantasy of explosions, fire and a moving planet: literary dystopias turned into a prophecy

During their childhood, today’s generation of adults imagined a future with flying cars, smart watches and houses, digital newspapers, video calls and virtual jobs. The Jetsons. Apart from the cars that cross the sky, many of them have become a reality, although there is a factory of Swedish-Polish origin called Jetson One, which announced that there will be one on the market by 2026. One directed by George Jetson.

Far from normal, rather than an advanced technological science fiction, The future dreamed of since the mid-20th century turned out to be a very sad nightmare.. Terrorist attacks, post-truth, fascist right advancing in elections. An accusing finger towards the science and superiority of astrology as a yardstick for managing oneself in the world. Of the novel, a few strokes of reality.

Is this true or an urban myth? Maybe it started as a social joke and someone finally made it. It doesn’t matter. The truth is, it’s believably, bitterly funny. A bookseller changed the “dystopia” section of his store to “reality and current events.”. Something that makes more sense and less comedy. During the 20th century the most remote terrifying dark ideas imagined began to become a part of everyday life.

Ultimately, the paranoia is real Philip K. DickAn indifferent colonial society Ursula K. Le GuinRobots Isaac AsimovExcessive surveillance George OrwellAll that was Prognostic literature. On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in favor of ending the protection of the right to abortion and the right to voluntarily terminate a pregnancy may be discussed again in Argentina. A subtle and brutal pullback in equity. As in the beginning Handmaid’s Taleof Margaret Atwood.

Artificial intelligence for chatting, how funny, ends up being a mechanism to avoid the increasingly common loneliness, how sad. No one rings a friend’s doorbell anymore, and there are no neighbors who actually know each other. In buildings or neighborhoods with sidewalks. Virtual relationships across distances become bonds where bodies do not touch. There are trips to space, which are made by eccentric millionaires for tourism.

forest fire In Australia, in Cordoba. Less forest and barren land. Migrants dying in rafts meters from cities that refuse to receive them. Religions over governments play TEG in the real world. Strict border closures everywhere. The idea of ​​building a wall to separate a poor country from a rich country. It all happens. This is not fantasy.

In 1984 George Orwell He envisioned a society where the government oversees everything under the guise of Big Brother. Above Reality It already has that name Vintage, Life in social networks is somewhat similar To the original proposal of the British author. Everything is shown, if there is no photo, video, it’s like nothing happened. Winston Smith, the hero of the novel, works in the Ministry of Truth, a ministry that twists history to suit the convenience of a single party. Sounds?

“What a pity it’s an ugly day, a lot of people would like to come,” he said. Maurizio Macri It took him from the Casa Rosada to Congress on his way to inaugurate the regular sessions as president in March 2016. Believing it was the weather’s fault or the crowd’s lack of love, then, until each person’s interpretation. The phrase became a joke, a joke, a meme.

Months later, on Friday, January 20, 2017, Donald Trump He was sworn in as the President of the United States. The swearing-in ceremony was at noon, and few people were present. It didn’t rain. Users on the networks were responsible for showing the meeting that went on in 2009 Barack Obama. Then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer said “about 720,000 people” went.

Little public photography throbbed in the face of Republican manifesto and isolation. On January 22, 2017 The term “alternative facts” appeared. Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway defended the false report this way. As Orwell envisioned in 1949, through “newspeak,” a way of simplifying language to make any form of anti-authoritarian thought impossible. Dystopia turned out to be a foreboding.

From the pandemic and global lockdown of 2020 to this point, the question or comment has been constant. This is disaster in sandals. That’s what it feels like during quarantine. But the situation goes beyond Covid. It comes from before. And then it intensified. It’s all ridiculous. A bad joke. or evil. Many of the tensions and fears that science fiction has explored for decades are now at play. Above the chaotic present is an unfathomable magnifying glass that expands the most absurd imaginations. And that makes them real.

Women die from cosmetic surgery without medical or surgical precautions. Delivery is the only job, and more and more young people are delivering food on bicycles to fewer people who can pay for the order placed on the application. Destructive nature, climate change, germ wars, epidemics, terrorist attacks, third world war. Some are missing Zombies We are in one universe Cyberpunk Almost manual. Instead of literature, Dick has written a rather brutal instruction manual. Humanity follows it to the letter.

Around the dwarf star Trappist-1, 39 light-years away, is a solar system with seven exoplanets, at least three of which are thought to be habitable. Looks like the beginning of the story Hillof Frank Herbert, but it is true. It was discovered by a team of astronomers in 2016. According to NASA, they will reveal secret reports that prove the existence of UFOs. Contact with aliens and possible extraterrestrial life. It’s not a piece Quote with RamaThrough the brilliant novel Arthur C. ClarkNews from current newspapers also says that among the sightings the US space agency is taking seriously, there is one here in Bahia Blanca, Argentina.

Private commercial space transportation company SpaceX Elon Musk, organized an excursion to the moon for billionaires. Locked on a wayward ship, humanity travels. Civilization spreads and primitive humans live in forests of hydroponic tanks. What is news and what is fiction. The first took place in 2018 and the second is back cover starshipAlong with the novel Brian Altice He emerged in 1958 as a representative of the genre’s new British wave.

Escape from earth is suddenly palpable. And because this planet is terrifying, it becomes utopian. As if real life were a fairy tale, humanity collectively fantasizes about moving into the neighboring realm of Aquarius. Theodore Sturgeon. Perhaps one of those planets falls in love with the viewer and offers him exotic landscapes. A dreamerHis story is 1974. Let horror be at least a small poem.

The bookseller who replaced the genre novels is increasingly right. What type of shelf does current information go into? A gradual human colonization of extraterrestrial life could occur in the Middle Ages The Martian Chronicles Published by Ray Bradbury In 1950. It’s beautiful, but it should be taken as a warning. Although the swarthy, yellow-eyed people on Mars are initially friendly, they eventually realize that the visitors are insects. In the story “The Long Years”, there are robots that replace dead relatives, and humans are alone, isolated, crazy. According to the American author, this will happen in April 2026. It’s missing that much.