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Autzoo.1654 net.sf-lovers utzoo!henry Mon May 10 19:23:46 1982 predictions Something that has always interested me is cases of successful prediction in SF. I am *not* talking about things like predicting that man would someday land on the moon; my criteria for an interesting prediction are: - It should be fairly specific. - It should be non-trivial and non-obvious. - It should be correct or very close.

Here is a moderately striking example. In "Rocket Jockey", by "Philip St. John" (Lester del Rey), a Winston juvenile published in 1952, it was predicted that the first man on the moon would land in the 1960's -- and that his name would be Armstrong!!!!

Now, this prediction wasn't perfect. Del Rey picked 1965, missing by four years (although in those pre-Sputnik days, a much more plausible guess would have been 1995). And his "Major Armstrong" doesn't really match Neil Armstrong all that well (for one thing, Neil Armstrong was a civilian). Still fairly striking, though.

Before the net.psi types jump on me, I should observe that I find nothing peculiar about a few successful predictions among thousands of failures. I do find them interesting, though; anybody have any other good ones? (Reply by mail, not news; I'll summarize the responses for the net.)

Henry Spencer decvax!utzoo!henry

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