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Old 08-07-2018, 09:57 AM   #20 (permalink)
niky
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Quote:
Originally Posted by redpoint5 View Post
The brilliance of Star Trek is exploring humanity by introducing aliens who have human traits taken to an extreme.

...and I agree that great SciFi or fantasy requires adhering to the rules of the world that was created.

Star Trek has predicted many of the technologies that now exist. Doors that open and close automatically, communicators, touch screens, taking computers, etc.
Quite agree. Mind you: "Space Opera" is a jab against Sci-Fi that's more Fi than Sci, but TNG did raise Trek to a level far beyond the original series... which was campy as hell, but had some genuinely good moments.

Prediction wise, you can always get lucky... automated doors, communicators and computers were not a far reach for the technology of the time. (we did have radios ad computers, and computers communicating by radio) And touch screens didn't appear until TNG, I believe... and we already were experimenting with touch-sensitive surfaces on screens at the time.

Most of it was typical futurist 'wishful thinking'.

A truly impressive prediction would be to look at where technology is heading and to predict something that isn't quite commonsense... like Arthur C. Clarke's prediction of communications satellites years before the space race began (and his prediction of tablets) or Jules Verne's electric submarine or Moon Cannon. Verne was wildly off in some things, but eerily accurate in others... predicted the thrust needed to leave Earth's gravity on one hand... on the other, in "Master of the World" (or was it "Robur the Conqueror", internet is not helpful here!), he wrongly stated that a ground vehicle moving at 100 miles per hour would be moving too fast to be seen by the naked eye.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Angel And The Wolf View Post
Star Trek is social commentary safely removed to a galaxy far away.
Example: Racism:
They're Pandas.

Well, almost.

They're not part-Asian.
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