Who were the most prescient science fiction authors?

CPT Jack Durish — Sat, 06 Feb 2021 20:58:00 -0500

I grew up with science fiction of the forties and fifties and none foresaw the wonders that the microchip wrought. Indeed, the original Star Trek crew (who appeared in the series in the mid-1960's) had hand-held devices to communicate as well as a "tri-corder". Even the doctor's microprocessor tools didn't appear in the movies until much later.

One of my favorite cartoons illustrated the Star Trek crew meeting some kids with smartphones on their trip to Early San Francisco to save whales, and the kids laugh at the crew's communicators that could only be used to talk.

However, the comic author, Chester Gould, conceived of a wrist radio and later added TV, and only recently Apple produced the wrist watch with video. I'd say that puts Chester in the forefront of the pack (and he wasn't even a sci-fi author).

Ultimately, one of the few sci-fi authors who hasn't been surpassed in Frank Herbert who cast his Dune stories so far into the future that human minds are conditioned to surpass computers.