The Future Ain’t What It Was: 16 Predictions for What 1950 Through 1980 Was Going to Be Like
Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.
-Niels Bohr, 1885-1962
The years 1950 through 1980 were filled with predictions of the future. These were found in books, in films, on television, as part of ad campaigns, and interwoven in efforts to obtain hearts and minds by both sides during the Cold War. In most cases, the predictions of the future were either set many centuries forward, like say “in the 25th Century” or “in the year 2525,” or they were proclaimed in more fluid terms, like the vital “the World That’s Coming,” which all beat the much less stirring “a time our children will know better.”
Interestingly, that period itself was also the subject of speculation. As far back as during the American Civil War, there were predictions made as to what to expect in those years; some were rather wildly off the mark, but all were interesting, if for no reason than because for these oracles, those were years of allegorical wonder, not nostalgia.
For this piece, the focus is on predictions that either have a hard year set or could reasonably be assumed based on close reading to be put in that time; thus, works like Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men and the film Damnation Alley, which suggest that events take place during these decades, did not make strong enough assertions to support that. Works below whose setting is derived as opposed to stated will be noted as such.
1) Paris in the Twentieth Century
Novel by Jules Verne
Year created: 1861
Year predicted: 1960
What was predicted: France is a technocratic state; despite such wonders as the automobile, electric lights, faxes, synthesizers and recorded music, and fire-and-forget weapons systems, there is no pursuit of the arts, only business, which means Verne also predicted the unemployability of Liberal Arts majors.
As we follow the main character of the novel, Michael Dufrenoy, as he goes from wide-eyed sensitive to disenchanted and starving, the book’s take on the future French city becomes bleaker than Goddard’s Alphaville, with no happy ending to the work as found in Verne’s other novels. It can be hard to understand what motivated Verne to write such a dark tale about the advance of technology, although we can see clues as to what he thought of Western ideals and how they might abuse such wonders as we look at one of Verne’s most famous creations, Captain Nemo. Because of the work’s tone, his publisher suggested pushing the book back in the publication schedule; by the time it did see print, it was 1994, at which point critics and scholars would marvel how much Verne got right in his predictions. About the only thing differentiating this imagined Paris and the historical one was the absence of Charles de Gaulle.
2) “The Unparalleled Invasion”
Short story by Jack London
Year created: 1910
Year predicted: 1975
What was predicted: China uses its booming population to threaten to take over the world by sheer numbers alone, to which the United States responds with genocidal germ warfare, emptying the Middle Kingdom in seven years.
Not everyone is aware that Jack London’s early works were science fiction. More are surprised by this fact than by his fear of the “yellow peril” that he shared with other xenophobic Californians during the early 20th Century. By running the numbers and playing on his readers’ fears (and not realizing how insensitive this would read to later generations, especially after Unit 731 had come into existence and tried to carry out this plot), London’s work about 1975 seems less a thought piece on the future than a convenient peg on which to hang his sad tale.
3) R.U.R.
Play by Karel Capek
Year created: 1921
Year predicted: 1962 (assumptive)
What was predicted: Within a generation of a man named Rossum’s discovery of artificial protoplasm in 1932, and after an argument with his family as to how to exploit this, the company, Rossum’s Universal Robots (the R.U.R. of the title), was providing the world with cheap labor, which made a few folks rich before the robot uprising brings about the end of human domination of the planet.
One of the more important works of science fiction ever written, the play introduced the word “robot” to the English language; though the word “robopocalypse” came about decades later, the play is the first depiction of such an event. Written soon after the First World War, the play reflects shock of technological change leaving victims in its wake, a concern people in 1962 actually experienced in the face of increasing automation, along with nuclear annihilation. The themes of our technology being mishandled and allowed to threaten us before we see the danger becomes a major plot point in science fiction going forward.
4) Just Imagine
Film, directed by David Butler
Year created: 1930
Year predicted: 1980
What was predicted: People with numbers for names drive flying cars and eat meals in pill form, unable to love whomever they want without government approval, unless you can fly to Mars and survive an uprising among the natives there, in which case, hey, why not…?
More farce than thought piece, this release by 20th Century Fox claims to be the first science fiction talkie/musical, not that that helps it much. Littered with elements found in Popular Mechanics at the time, like pill food and flying cars (suppositions that were still discussed in the magazine as “in our future” as late as 1980), the running one-note joke is El Brendel’s “Single O,” a man who was revived from 1930 after being hit by lightning on a golf course, being confronted by a modern advancement and responding with, “Give me the good old days.” About the only thing this film got right was supposing someone like Alvin Toffler would be around then.
5) Things To Come
Film, directed by William Cameron Menzies; screenplay by H.G. Wells
Year created: 1936
Year predicted: 1970
What was predicted: Decades after another world war has ground civilization to dust, warlords fighting for pieces of England are pulled out of their barbarity by scientists who cloistered themselves like monks during the last Dark Ages, who then bring us to a new level of development by 2036.
Adapted by Wells from his 1933 book The Shape of Things to Come, the film was an ambitious effort to preach Well’s vision of mankind overcoming hardship, depicting a crisis leading to a better future. The second act of the film is the part set in 1970, bookended by 1940 when war with an unnamed enemy (though everyone just knew who they meant) leads to calamity, and a 2036 where we came back from that better than ever. Although the details of the post-World War II era differ radically from where Wells saw things going, he gets props for going at least in the right general direction. Even if the details of the future were off, the film is still worth seeing for its spirit and craftsmanship, which led to its Criterion release in 2013.
6) Futurama
Exhibit at 1939 World’s Fair, designed by Norman Bel Geddes for General Motors
Year created: 1939
Year predicted: 1960
What was predicted: America would be graced with a major automated highway system that would allow for free movement across the country with ease.
A component of the 1939 World’s Fair that actually date-checked its vision, GM was part of the effort to offer a bright future after the Great Depression as an alternative to fascism and Soviet-style collectivism. While automated cars are still being worked on as of this writing, the road network envisaged would come about during Eisenhower’s administration as the Interstate System came online. And yes, this is where the name came from when Matt Groening’s other show was created.
7) Childhood’s End
Novel by Arthur C. Clarke
Year created: 1953
Year predicted: 1975 (assumptive)
What was predicted: As we head into the end of the century, the US and USSR are racing to get to the moon first, while the Republic of South Africa has a majority-run government that is trying to handle its legacy; none of which in the end matters when aliens arrive and proceed with a “soft conquest.”
Early editions of this classic used the above to set the period; as the book stayed in print well after events outstripped the work, Clarke tried to update this section before just dropping it altogether and opening the book after the Overlords have appeared. Considering Clarke’s track record for non-date specified predictions (including communications satellites, predicted by Clarke in 1945 and realized by 1960), his presence and efforts merit mention. Also worth note was that originally, Stanley Kubrick had wanted to work with Clarke to adapt this novel for film; when that fell apart, they went with Plan B, resulting in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
8) Project Moonbase
Film, directed by Richard Talmage; screenplay by Robert A. Heinlein and Jack Seaman
Year created: 1953
Year predicted: 1970
What was predicted: By 1970, the US would have a functional space station, but had not yet gone to the moon. As the film progresses, an act of sabotage during a scouting expedition forces our hand to form a human community on the lunar surface.
Heinlein’s screenplay is a great demonstration of his attention to scientific detail (and dismissive attitudes about women back then, unfortunately), which at the time showed a better understanding of space travel than most people working in Hollywood at that time. In Heinlein’s scenario, there’s a more militant bend on who leads the way to the stars that contrasts with our NASA of 1970; how much of what he wrote about in this film influenced Starship Troopers, we can only guess.
9) On the Beach
Novel by Nevil Shute; adapted as film, directed by Stanley Kramer; screenplay by John Paxton
Year created: 1957 (novel), 1959 (film)
Year predicted: 1963 (novel), 1964 (film)
What was predicted: After a nuclear war (detailed in the novel, left fuzzy in the film), the last humans in Australia, including the crew of an American nuclear attack sub, await their final days as clouds of toxic fallout creep towards them.
Thankfully, the nuclear war predicted never came to pass; whether there would have been global radiation poisoning was beside the point, as the work’s main theme was how people deal with the certainty of their demise. That, and how important it was to avoid nuclear confrontation; the film’s last shot, focusing on a banner that reads, “There’s Still Time, Brothers,” broadcasts their message without ambiguity.
10) The Time Machine
Film, directed by George Pal; screenplay by David Duncan, adapted from the novel by H. G. Wells
Year created: 1960
Year predicted: 1966
What was predicted: Brief foray by George the Inventor to see London on August 18, 1966, just before a nuclear attack on the city prompts volcanoes to explode and cover the city in lava.
It’s all of maybe a few minutes in a film that spends a lot more time in 1900 and 802,701 CE, but even if we forgive Pal for giving us a London in 1966 that was neither swinging nor mod, the nuclear-triggered volcanoes were a bit much. As this scene seemed more an afterthought en route to the Morlocks later on, we can forgive this.
11) Seven Days in May
Novel by Fletcher Nebel and Charles W. Bailey II; adapted as film directed by John Frankenheimer; screenplay by Rod Serling
Year created: 1962 (novel); 1964 (film)
Year predicted: 1972 (novel); 1965 or 1972 (film, assumptive)
What was predicted: In the novel, the US and USSR fought a conventional war over Iran, splitting the country into two after a stalemate, encouraging a military coup after another waste of power. In the film, no excuse is given for the military to try and oust the government.
Both versions of the work are less predictions than allegorical reflections, in this case over Truman’s tussles with MacArthur in 1951 (mixed with elements of the Business Plot of 1933). What the movie doesn’t state with clarity (the assumptive years above derive from the date clock we see in scenes showing the Pentagon date clock, putting the action during Monday May 12 to Sunday May 18, the only two during this time the calendar cooperates), it insinuates; the opening protest scene that gets broken up in front of the White House can be inferred as either the disarmament campaign or the early anti-Vietnam protests just starting up. Underlying the core work is fear of the military-industrial complex Eisenhower noted in his farewell speech, a fear that sees more use in works that come during and after the Reagan Administration. (Interestingly, this is one of only three predictions Serling made about the close-coming years; the other two, the episodes “The Old Man in the Cave” (set in 1974) and “The Brain Center at Whipple’s” (set in 1967) from the last season of Twilight Zone, came on screen during the series’ tailspin into cancellation, and are not as well remembered.)
12) The Last Man on Earth
Film, directed by Ubalno Ragonda and Sidney Salkow; screenplay by William F. Leicster and Richard Matheson, adapted from Matheson’s novel I Am Legend
Year created: 1964
Year predicted: 1968
What was predicted: After a plague infects humanity, turning people into vampiric zombies, one lone uninfected man fights off the monsters and isolation.
Matheson’s classic novel about the scientifically accurate undead did not state the year we watch Robert Nevell deal with demons (internal an ex-) after the end came; the performance Vincent Price gives of a tortured soul is so moving, it makes the year its set in immaterial as he gives one of his best performances ever caught on screen (and one of the few times he was a victim of monsters, as opposed to a monster himself). The novel was actually made into a film three times, the others being 1971’s The Omega Man (set in 1977, with trappings that date this film badly which the first one avoided) and 2007’s I Am Legend.
13) Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
Television series, created by Irwin Allen
Year created: 1964
Year predicted: 1979 (assumptive)
What Was predicted: By end of next decade, an advanced nuclear sub with windows up front would keep us safe from dangers, both serious and silly.
Unlike a lot of folks looked at so far here, Allen was probably the most hopeful, in terms of what wonders we’d see. Beyond the period of covered predictions, he suggested at we’d have a flying submersible just after 1980 (Seasons 3 and 4 of the series), have suborbital passenger service by 1983 (Land of the Giants), and be able to colonize other star systems by 1997 (Lost In Space). While these were less serious examinations of the future than cool throwaway details, it showed a faith in things to come that others were not touching. And these were the wonders that were not classified, unlike…
14) The Time Tunnel
Television series, created by Irwin Allen
Year created: 1966
Year predicted: 1968, with two excursions to 1978
What was predicted: Very soon, the US government will have a functioning (if not fully working) time machine, which will send people ahead ten years on, where we’re sending manned missions to Mars.
Allen’s positive vision for the near future was something of a throwaway detail, in relation to the overall story about two scientists lost to a continuous time travel accident. Still, it showed an overriding philosophy in his work, that we had bright futures filled with wonders that will save us from dangers, both strange and silly. Much like above, there’s lots of hope, but not much sense.
15) UFO
Television series, created by Gary and Silvia Anderson
Year created: 1970
Year predicted: 1980
What was predicted: The next decade would see the gull wing cars and trimline telephones that made up the future in all of the Andersons’ other shows, along with a military base on the moon that’s kept secret to not scare Earthlings unaware that we’re under attack by aliens; in addition, there’s going to be a healthy British film industry again by then!
The first live action series by the producers who gave us “Supermarionation” was set a lot closer to the time the show aired than any of their other works (both Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterions were set in the 2060s). A strong argument could be made that this was a way to keep costs down in having the setting being only slightly futuristic in design in such a close setting; the fact that S.H.A.D.O.W.’s secret base was under an active studio was certainly a cost cutting action in that shots could be made at MGM-British without needing to dress any sets. While most of the predictions did not come to pass, in 1979 George Harrison produced Monty Python’s Life of Brian, leading to the formation of Handmade Films, so at least one thing they got right.
16) Escape from the Planet of the Apes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3FiT8km_tQ
Film, directed by Paul Taylor, screenplay by Paul Dehn
Year created: 1971
Year predicted: 1973
What was predicted: Much like our own time, save that we’ll have much better spaceships which are so well engineered that they can be reused to bring intelligent chimpanzees back to us from the far future.
With only the Liberty 2 space ship props from the other films serving to indicate some sense of the future, this film’s unambitious predictions of what’s to come is in many ways representative of how Hollywood was looking at genre works back then: If we bother, it has to be done on the cheap. The fact that the third film of the “Apes franchise” required only three people in ape make-up, with one of them (Sal Mineo in his last film) getting killed off a fourth of the way through, must have appealed to Fox’s budget directors, and the low overhead ensured that the box office was good enough for a sequel to be greenlit, set in the far distant future of 1991.
But that’s an era for another time…
