I read that old stuff back in the day. I agree it's amusing to read now. Even relatively recent SF didn't predict the cell phone revolution. Many still thought faxing would still be a thing. Even on spaceships. I read a Bruce Sterling novel recently ("Islands in the Net", 1988) that thought telex would be the main means of communication and that video phones were too expensive for real-time use, so people pre-recorded messages and squirted compressed versions to the recipient. The future is hard to predict!
The thing about a lot of SF is that it's about the ideas presented, and dialog and human interactions often do take a back seat. Great for idea people and techies, less so for lovers of literary fiction.
And, yeah, as I said, some written SF is very good. Octavia E. Butler was a good blend of ideas and writing. Her two-book series "Parable of the Sower" (1993) and "Parable of the Talents" (1998) is almost eerie in how it anticipates P45&47. A near spitting image.
I read that old stuff back in the day. I agree it's amusing to read now. Even relatively recent SF didn't predict the cell phone revolution. Many still thought faxing would still be a thing. Even on spaceships. I read a Bruce Sterling novel recently ("Islands in the Net", 1988) that thought telex would be the main means of communication and that video phones were too expensive for real-time use, so people pre-recorded messages and squirted compressed versions to the recipient. The future is hard to predict!
The thing about a lot of SF is that it's about the ideas presented, and dialog and human interactions often do take a back seat. Great for idea people and techies, less so for lovers of literary fiction.
And, yeah, as I said, some written SF is very good. Octavia E. Butler was a good blend of ideas and writing. Her two-book series "Parable of the Sower" (1993) and "Parable of the Talents" (1998) is almost eerie in how it anticipates P45&47. A near spitting image.