As the bizarre, toxic yet darkly fascinating year 2016 has faded completely into an unknown 2017, a question or two occurs with relevance to the next few years. Did legendary science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein predict much of what has just happened in a series of stories he worked out before the United States entered World War II?
In his 'Future History' series, Heinlein did point to a presidential election which occurs right about, well, now as the moment in which the United States falls into "a dictatorship of superstition." The cause? The election, during the nation's most tempestuous and combustible of campaigns, of an anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-foreigner populist appealing to racists and fundamentalist Christians and uber-rich reactionaries who wins a narrow victory. In the last presidential election for 75 years.
Who was it who said it can't happen here?
And, oh yes, did legendary science fiction writer Isaac Asimov give rise to a fateful fascination with the deeply flawed notion of predictive statistical modeling of complex historical events like, say, presidential elections with his fictional but highly influential faux science of "psychohistory?"
It was the summer of 2015 when I realized I had somehow awakened in a universe that felt much like a cheesy SyFy Channel movie. A real estate hustler/reality TV star notorious for slapping his name on everything making a very serious stab at the White House ... Man, that made Marvel movies seem like Shakespeare! But if it's a science fictional world, why not the best? Besides, there was something oddly familiar about it. I never saw the movie (which has not yet been made), but I may have read the book.
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