Twentieth-century science fiction writers have often placed their heroes in the next century, detailing the technology and society of the future. Almost everyone was sure that in 100-150 years mankind would already conquer the nearest interplanetary space. It turned out a little differently. How our time appears in the most famous science fiction works.
In a rocket around the sun
The story of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky "Out of the Earth", written before the revolution, is set in 2017. French, English, German, American, Italian and Russian, all very rich, retire to a castle in the Himalayas to build a rocket. Russian engineer Ivanov proposes the principle of a jet engine and provides calculations for overcoming gravity. The heroes secretly build a ship in the form of a giant spindle a hundred meters long and go into space, taking with them a supply of food and air.
During the flight, they go out into space in spacesuits and build a greenhouse outside the rocket, providing themselves with food and oxygen for many years. They sit on the opposite side of the Moon and travel on its surface. Our satellite turns out to be inhabited, inhabited by strange rootless plant organisms. Having flown several times around the Sun, having studied the space between Earth and Mars, the researchers return home.
On Earth, people use wood and coal for heating. Transport is horse-drawn, however, aeronautics on airships and airplanes are developed.
Earthlings are able to build cities in near-earth orbit. They are governed by a single government, made up of representatives of all states, a "common human" language operates. "Wars were impossible," Tsiolkovsky reports.
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Colonization of Mars
The series of short stories "The Martian Chronicles" by American writer Ray Bradbury, created in the late 1940s, is dedicated to the settlement of Mars.
Project for a possible life on Mars.
People who have mastered nuclear energy send an expedition to the Red Planet in 1999, but the crew disappears without a trace. Subsequent missions also fail. This is due to the Martians, who have telepathy, hypnosis and the ability to send hallucinations. However, the population of the planet is dying because of the chickenpox brought from the Earth.
Colonization of Mars begins in 2002. Earthlings arrive on rockets in tens of thousands, actively transforming nature. “In six months, a dozen towns with a great number of crackling neon tubes and yellow light bulbs were laid on the bare planet,” Bradbury writes.
However, the Great War begins on Earth in November 2005. Twenty years later, only one American family escapes it on Mars, and colonization is resumed. Bradbury sees the reason for what happened in too rapid scientific progress and human enthusiasm for machines.
The lost civilization of Venus
Polish writer Stanislav Lem dedicated his first novel Astronauts (1951) to the flight to Venus. The communist society of earthlings in 2003 took possession of nuclear and thermonuclear energy, controls the climate, floods the Sahara and heats the polar regions.
“The difficult, tense and great era of a just transformation of the world has ended. Need, economic chaos and war no longer threatened the great designs of the inhabitants of the Earth,”explains Lem.
There is a telephone connection, newspapers, radio and television.
People dream of the stars and build an experimental nuclear-powered spacecraft Kosmokrator based on the principles formulated by the Russian physicist Kapitsa. The synthetic substance of communes serves as fuel for it.
The crew of the "Cosmocrator" under the leadership of Commander Pyotr Arsenyev is to go to Venus. The fact that the planet is inhabited is known from the decryption of a magnetic record found in the wreckage of a spacecraft that crashed on Podkamennaya Tunguska in 1908. The transcript was done by the "Electronic Brain" supercomputer of the Leningrad Mathematical Institute.
During the expedition to Venus, it turns out that its inhabitants are far ahead of the earthlings in technological development. They invented an anti-gravity generator and magnetic cannons with which they were going to conquer the Earth. However, nuclear war destroyed their civilization.
Conquest of Venus
The flight to Venus is in the center of the plot of the novel by Soviet writers Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, "The Land of Crimson Clouds", published in 1960. The action takes place in the 1990s in the Union of Soviet Communist Republics - a technocratic, fairly organized society that has reached a high level of technical development.
Earthlings send several expeditions to Venus, but unsuccessfully. The “Khius-2” spacecraft on photon engines with an absolute particle reflector sets off for the next flight. The goal is to explore uranium deposits and equip a space for a spaceport.
Two years after the conquest of Venus, the earthlings colonize it.
Overpopulated earth
In his essay "Attending the World's Fair in 2014", published in 1964, American science fiction writer Isaac Asimov gave a forecast of the development of civilization for half a century ahead.
One of the main dangers is planetary overpopulation. Six billion people and a life expectancy of up to 85 years prompted the creation of the World Population Control Center, which promotes reduced fertility.
Due to overcrowding, people are exploring the deserts and polar regions, building underground and underwater cities. The land was given away for agriculture. The oversaturation of roads leads to the development of underground unmanned vehicles.
The gadget industry is booming, fueled by cheap radioisotope batteries. In smart homes, the microclimate is automatically regulated, just like cooking. Computers are miniature, but robots are not yet ubiquitous.
An experimental thermonuclear reactor is in operation, solar energy is developed, including in space. Thanks to satellites, communication is publicly available.
There is a colony on the Moon, a manned mission to Mars is just being prepared.
Due to the automation of manual labor, everyone has a lot of free time, which is not clear what to do. "Society of forced leisure" - this is how Azimov characterizes the existing social structure. Idleness and boredom lead to dire psychological and social consequences.
Tatiana Pichugina