literary predictions. Science fiction writers who predicted the future

Science fiction writers who predicted the future

Oddly enough, but the prediction of talented writers is sometimes more accurate than any predictions of titled psychics and magicians. What is the reason for their visionary success: the gift of clairvoyance or sincere faith in their ideas? In any case, today we will pay tribute to them and tell the four writers who predicted the future.

Herbert Wales (1914)

When it comes to literary genres that best predict the future, sci-fi is unbeatable. Wales has made a significant contribution to the list of these forecasts. Who hasn't read his "War of the Worlds"? When the book was staged on the radio, many began to think about the serious possibility of an alien invasion, the military and scientists included.

And, nuclear weapons were not slow to appear, in justification, appealing to such masterpieces of the classics as "The Sun Trap" and "The Last World War". Who would have thought that Wales could provoke global hysteria by telling his fantasies. The atomic bombs in the works of Wales were not at all as sinister as they were created by impressionable scientists.

In 1932, the physicist Leo Szilard, after reading the book, decided to get serious about atomic weapons, and a year later he was working for the US government, praising the power and strength of a nuclear chain reaction. Most likely, Szilard did not read the book to the end, because it was not atomic weapons that defeated the aliens according to Wales himself.

Hugo Gernsback (1911)

The title of his novel Ralph 124C41+ looks more like a typing error, but this futuristic novel set in the year 2660 is chock-full of predictions about future technological inventions. Not to mention that the story itself begins with Ralph (an 11-year-old boy) receiving the wrong videophone call from a stranger (even in the future, the technology is junk).

Among other things, the book mentions solar panels, synthetic food, and cassette recorders. And the most amazing thing is the detailed description of the operation of the radar. Unfortunately, both the author and the book are little known among readers of the 21st century, but if you wish, you can find a copy.

Nigel Neil (1968)

An acclaimed screenwriter for the BBC, he was the progenitor of the sci-fi genre on television. His approach to fantasy was quite specific - he used it to overcome his deep-seated subconscious fears. He again returned to the topic of nuclear war.

He painted in detail the horrors of the atomic apocalypse, a subject much loved by the media in the 1960s. He also spoke about the problem of overpopulation of the planet and the desire of the government to manipulate the consciousness of the masses with the help of PR technologies (morality, religion, bigotry, pornography, NLP, mind-numbing TV shows, drugs).

Neal Stevenson (1991)

Meet the "inventor" of virtual reality. It was he who spoke in his books about the Internet, chat rooms, forums, the metaverse, avatars, multiplayer online games, electronic money and the ability for everyone to communicate with everyone at the same time, anywhere and anytime. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

We hope you learned something new for yourself, and our article was useful to you. We would love it if you share your thoughts with us in the comments.

Predictions in art

Literature

Russian folk tales

The Russian people have always believed in miracles. Therefore, in all our fairy tales there are magical objects: walking boots, a self-assembled tablecloth, a flying carpet, a miracle mirror, a flying ship, etc.

Thinking writers such as Verne, Wells, Lem, Altov, Efremov, Stapledon, are able to foresee the future better than futurologists, astrologers and other prophets of our time. The reason is simple: the authors of predictive fiction write about qualitative leaps in the development of mankind. They don't move around ideas like a circus horse driven by the whip of imagination - they transcend.

There are two groups of science fiction writers. In the first place, include authors who saw the purpose of their work in imagining what the future of mankind could become. The second group includes authors for whom science fiction is only a method, an entourage, a background for creating a “tale about a man”. The authors belonging to the first category were Alexander Belyaev, Genrikh Altov, Ivan Efremov (from Soviet writers) and Jules Verne, HG Wells, Hugo Gernsbeck, Olaf Stapledon, Stanislav Lem (from Western writers).

Jules Gabriel Verne

February 8, 1828, Nantes, France - French geographer and writer, classic, one of the founders of science fiction. Member of the French Geographical Society.

"From the Earth to the Moon" (1865)

"Journey to the Center of the Earth" (1864)

"Around the Moon" (1869,

"20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" 1870)

People who attribute to poets the ability to predict the future often cite a poem by M.Yu. Lermontov "Prediction" (1830). In reality, this is not a prophecy about Russian revolutionary turmoil, but an experience of those disturbing and disastrous events that the year 1830 brought to Europe and Russia. "Cholera riots" took place in the southern and southeastern provinces of Russia. On June 3, 1830, during one of them, the governor of Sevastopol N.A. was killed. Stolypin is the brother of Lermontov's grandmother.

An uprising broke out in Poland, and a revolution took place in France. This gave a special mood to the 16-year-old poet.

He is trying to project onto Russia the experience of the bloody French Revolution of 1789-1794. It is important to note that in the autograph of the poem, next to the title, there is an author's postscript: "This is a dream."

The threads of past historical events are clearly visible in the poetic fabric of the poem.

A year will come, Russia's black year, When the kings crown will fall; The mob will forget their former love for them, And the food of many will be death and blood; When children, when innocent wives The overthrown will not protect the law; When a plague from stinking, dead bodies Will begin to roam among the sad villages, To call from the huts with a handkerchief, And it will torment the smoothness of this poor land; And the glow will color the waves of the rivers: On that day a powerful man will appear, And you will recognize him - and you will understand Why he has a damask knife in his hand: And woe is for you! - your crying, your groan He will then seem ridiculous; And everything will be terrible, gloomy in him, Like his cloak with a lofty brow.

Edgar Poe

19.01.1809 – 01.10.1849

American writer, poet, essayist, literary critic and editor, representative of American Romanticism.

Creator of the form of the modern detective and the genre of psychological prose.

Some of Poe's works contributed to the formation and development of science fiction.

"A Tale of the Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym" (1838)

H. G. Wells

Born September 21, 1866 in the London suburb of Bromley (Kent). Throughout his creative life (since 1895), Wells wrote about 40 novels and several volumes of short stories, more than a dozen polemical works on philosophical problems and about the same number of works on the restructuring of society, two world histories, about 30 volumes with political and social forecasts, more than 3 books for children and an autobiography.

In 1895, Wells wrote his first work of fiction, the novel "Time Machine" about an inventor's journey into the distant future.

"War of the Worlds", "The Invisible Man"

In 1914, H. G. Wells wrote his prophetic novel, The World Set Free, in which he predicted the use of nuclear weapons of mass destruction and the uncontrollable consequences of this move. Wells wrote just a cautionary tale about the nuclear nightmare and mass death,

but the novel may have influenced the development of nuclear weapons. In 1932, the book was read by physicist Leo Szilard, a year later he developed the concept of a neutron chain reaction, and in 1943 received a patent

Morgan Andrew Robertson(1861 -1915) American writer of fantasy.

Robertson's most famous work was the story, first published in 1898 under the title "Futility" ( "Fullity"), and reprinted with minor changes in 1912 under the title "Futility, or the Crash of the Titan" .

It describes the last voyage of the ship "Titan", which was considered unsinkable and sank on the third return voyage, while trying to set a speed record at the intersection Atlantic Ocean .

Futility gained fame 14 years later, when the Titanic sank from a collision with an iceberg in April 1912.

• the main technical characteristics of Robertson's "Titan" and the real "Titanic" almost completely coincide,
• crash time (April midnight),
• cause of the crash (maximum speed in difficult ice conditions and, as a result, a collision with an iceberg and severe damage to the starboard side)
• the main reason for the large number of victims (lack of boats due to the shipowners' confidence in the ship's unsinkability).

• On the one hand, the book brought its author unprecedented popularity,
• on the other hand, he became an object of hatred on the part of the passengers of the Titanic and the relatives of the victims. For them, Morgan Robertson was more of an anti-hero. After the disaster, he began to receive hundreds of letters in which the writer was cursed along with his novel. Many even blamed him for everything that happened.
• Morgan Robertson died in 1915, only three years outliving the Titanic.

Alexander Romanovich Belyaev

(March 4 (16), 1884) - January 6, 1942) - Soviet science fiction writer, one of the founders of Soviet science fiction literature. Among his most famous novels are: "Professor Dowell's Head", "Amphibian Man", "Ariel", "CEC Star"(KETs - the initials of Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky) and many others (more than 70 science fiction works, including 13 novels). Sometimes he is called the Russian "Jules Verne".

Alexey Nikolaevich Tolstoy

(December 29, 1882 (January 10, 1883), Nikolaevsk, Samara province, Russian Empire - February 23, 1945, Moscow) - Russian Soviet writer and public figure, count. Author of socio-psychological, historical and science fiction novels, novellas and short stories, journalistic works. ("Hyperboloid engineer Garin", "Aelita").

N. Gumilyov

These ideals of courageous romanticism are inspired by the poems in which the poet speaks of his death. An unusual person and death should be unusual. But dying in Russia in 1921 was not unusual for a person who did not seek to adapt to that reality. Nikolai Gumilyov was arrested on August 3, 1921 as a member of the conspiracy of geography professor Vladimir Nikolaevich Tagantsev (1889–1921). On August 24, 1921, Petrgubchek pronounced a sentence on the remarkable poet Nikolai Gumilyov: “Gumilyov Nikolay Stepanovich, 35 years old, b. nobleman, philologist, member of the board of the publishing house "World Literature", married, non-partisan, former officer. Member of the Petrograd combat counter-revolutionary organization. Actively contributed to the drafting of proclamations of counter-revolutionary content, promised to connect with the organization

at the time of the uprising, a group of intellectuals, career officers,

who will actively take part in the uprising received from

organizations money for technical needs ... Sentence

to the highest measure of punishment - execution.

From the poem "I and You":

And I won't die on a bed, In the presence of a notary and a doctor, But in some wild crevice, Drowned in thick ivy,

To enter not in everything open, Protestant, tidy paradise, And where the robber, the publican And the harlot shout: Get up!

From the book: “African hunting. From a travel diary": "And at night I dreamed that for participating in some kind of Abyssinian palace coup they cut off my head, and I, bleeding, applaud the executioner's skill and rejoice at how simple, good and not at all painful it all is."

Raymond Douglas Bradbury

22.08.1920-05.06.2012

“People ask me to predict the future, and I just want to prevent it”

The American writer is considered a classic of science fiction, although a significant part of his work gravitates towards the genre of fantasy, parable or fairy tale. During his life, Bradbury created more than eight hundred different literary works.

"451 degrees Fahrenheit"

"Martian Chronicles"

"Dandelion Wine"

"Veld"

Benjamin Parravicini

1898-1974

Argentine painter and sculptor

Sometimes we cannot even imagine how accurately some writers predict the future of the world in their science fiction books. Apparently, the authors of some fictional novels and short stories know much more about the world around them than ordinary people. We have selected the most impressive predictions of writers that have become a reality in our time.

1. Cryonics

The first hints of cryonics theory can be found in the short story "Jameson's Companion", written by Neil R. Jones in 1931. The protagonist of the story - Professor Jameson - asks to transfer his body after death to the orbit of the Earth, hoping that it can be preserved at a temperature of absolute zero.

However, the concept of human cryopreservation was only popularized in 1947 by the American scientist Robert Ettinger, who later became known as the "father of cryonics". He wrote a utopian short story called The Penultimate Trump, which made him the first person to suggest that in the future, people would be able to choose whether they want to freeze their own body in order to then resurrect it.

2. Lab-grown meat

Artificially cultivated meat was first mentioned in a science fiction novel called "On Two Planets" written by Kurd Laswitz in 1897. In this book, "synthetic meat" is one of the varieties of synthetic food brought to Earth by the Martians.

3. Landing on the moon

In 1865, French writer Jules Verne published his novel "From the Earth to the Moon ...", in which he described a huge space pistol capable of launching projectiles from the Earth to its satellite.

A century later, the Apollo 11 spacecraft landed on the moon. The writer was able to predict not only the name of the device, but also the exact number of people on board. Verne even managed to predict the feeling of weightlessness experienced by the astronauts.

4. The crash of the Titanic

Morgan Robertson's story "Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan" was published in 1898. In it, the author told readers about a large "unsinkable" ship that was wrecked after colliding with an iceberg. 14 years later, the largest ship at that time was built, which was called the Titanic, and the circumstances of its crash were the same as described by Robertson.

5. Atomic bomb

In his novel The World Set Free, H. G. Wells predicted that a large number of people would die in the future, and the cause of this would be uranium-based hand grenades, which he called atomic bombs. 31 years have passed since the publication of the book, and as part of the Manhattan Project, a real atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

6. Nuclear arms race

Robert Heinlein's 1941 short story "A Worthless Solution" describes the United States, which was the first to develop nuclear weapons and become the only superpower on the planet. Heinlein also describes attempts by other nations to develop similar bombs. Later, all these events took place during the Cold War, when the nuclear arms race took place.

7. Waterbed

Robert Heinlein not only predicted the Cold War, but also waterbeds. In his 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land, he described these kinds of beds in such detail that their actual inventor had some patent issues.

8. Credit cards

In the utopian novel Looking Back, published in 1888, Edward Bellamy accurately predicted the advent of credit cards, although they had only been used since the 1950s.

The protagonist of the novel, Julian West, falls asleep in 1887 and wakes up in a utopian society in the year 2000. In this new society, all people receive the same amount of credit from the government, which can be used to buy various goods.

9. Moons of Mars

In his popular novel Gulliver's Travels, published in 1726, Jonathan Swift claimed that Mars had two moons. However, it took 151 years before scientists were able to actually detect them. In Swift's novel, the protagonist visits the fictional island of Laputa, where many scientists and astronomers live. It is they who tell the main character that Mars has two tiny moons.

10. Bluetooth headsets and headphones

Although the personal stereo did not appear until 1977, Ray Bradbury described headphones designed to distract the mind from the outside world in his novel Fahrenheit 451, which was published in 1953. People in the society Bradbury described often use shells and thimbles, which are strikingly similar to modern headphones and Bluetooth headsets.

11. Invention of the Internet

In 1898, Mark Twain wrote a short story, "From the London Times, 1904," which took place in 1904. The story focused on the mystery of the crime: the inventor of a promising new device called the Telescope was murdered. The new gadget is described by the author as a "contactless" phone that creates a worldwide network of information accessible to all. Very similar to the modern Internet, isn't it?

12. Antidepressants

In his dystopian novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley takes a rather bleak view of a society controlled by psychological manipulation. Drug-addicted citizens cannot live without pills that improve mood. These drugs, called soma, were created to reduce sad and anxious thoughts. The novel was written two decades before the first experiments with antidepressants began, but Huxley was able to predict their popularity.

Science fiction is called science fiction because the writers working in this genre rely on contemporary scientific achievements to design future ones. And the greater the talent of the science fiction author, the more accurate such predictions are. Therefore, there is nothing surprising in the fact that many contemporary phenomena and objects that we consider ordinary were once "characters" of science fiction novels and stories.

For example, such a banal device as in-ear headphones, which any student can buy today for mere pennies, first appeared in the legendary novel by American science fiction writer Ray Bradbury "451 degrees Fahrenheit", and they were called "Shells". Or the much rarer, but also more high-tech test-tube birth: described in the novel Brave New World! writer Aldous Huxley, and he put this process on the conveyor.

Details of space travel and global computer networks, video chats and tablet computers - references to such objects and phenomena can be found in science fiction writers of the past. Some of the writers managed to guess only certain things of the future, and someone, like, say, Herbert Wells, Jules Verne or Arthur C. Clarke, managed to describe almost half of the current machinery and digital technology. Today "MIR 24" tells its readers about the ten most famous objects and phenomena, the appearance of which was predicted in science fiction works.

The Atomic Bomb - HG Wells

Mankind was just approaching the idea of ​​splitting the atom, and the Briton HG Wells in his novel The World Unchained predicted the emergence of weapons based on this process. It happened in 1914 - three decades before Hiroshima and Nagasaki!

The hero of the novel, Holsten, causes the radioactive decay of heavy elements in 1933 in a tiny particle of bismuth: “There was a strong explosion, which resulted in a heavy gas with extremely high radioactivity - it disintegrated in a week. But the main thing was done - at the cost of a burn on the chest and a broken finger of the discoverer, – and from the second when an invisible particle of bismuth turned into a clot of destructive energy, Holsten already knew that he had opened the way for humanity - albeit still narrow, winding and dark - to boundless, inexhaustible power.

Bank cards - Edward Bellamy

The socialist utopia "Looking Back" by US socialist writer Edward Bellamy was first published in 1888. The novel described a journey through time more than a hundred years ahead - to the year 2000, to the America of the future, whose economy is built on the principles of socialism.

For example, all citizens of the country are obliged to work in the so-called "industrial army", receiving a guaranteed minimum for their work. But not in cash, but with special cards - judging by the description, those that are now called debit cards. According to Bellamy, an American of 2000 could pay with such a card anywhere in the country, which makes the prediction even more accurate. By the way, it is curious that in Russia the book “Looking Back” was translated and went through seven editions, the last in 1918: for obvious reasons, the Soviet authorities no longer allowed the reprint of the utopian novel.

Helicopter – Jules Verne

Photo: wikipedia.org

To be absolutely precise, the aircraft on which the brilliant lone inventor Robur, the hero of the novel Robur the Conqueror published in 1886, conquers the air ocean, looks more like an autogyro than a helicopter. After all, he has not only several lifting screws, but also one pulling in front - namely, according to this scheme, gyroplanes are built. But still, in the history of science fiction and helicopter engineering, Vern will remain the predictor of the appearance of the helicopter or helicopter.

True, outwardly, the Albatross, on which Robur and his companions travel, is more reminiscent of another famous prediction of Jules Verne - a submarine, since it has a spindle-shaped hull with a superstructure at the top, over which many two-bladed propellers rotate.

Internet - Mark Twain

American Mark Twain can hardly be called science fiction in the classical sense of the word. Nevertheless, he created several fantastic works, among them - the story "From the London Times for 1904", written by him in 1898.

The invention, which has all the features of the modern Internet, the writer called the "teleelectroscope", or the worldwide telephone. The hero of the story, Clayton, gets it at his disposal, and this is what he can do: “The device was taken out and connected to the international telephone network. Now Clayton called day and night to all corners of the globe, looked at the life there, observed various outlandish spectacles, talked to people, and thanks to this wonderful invention, it began to seem to him that he had wings grown, and he could fly wherever he wanted.

Laser – HG Wells

Photo: wikipedia.org

H. G. Wells was very good at foreseeing the war machines of the future: the atomic bomb, tanks, or, for example, a laser. Moreover, if few people know about the first and second, then the “rays of death” with which the aliens from Mars are armed in the novel “War of the Worlds” (first published in 1897) are known to almost everyone in the world.

This weapon, unique for earthlings, made the fighting machines of the Martians invincible, and if it were not for the banal terrestrial cold, they would not have been able to cope with them. Today, of course, the laser has not yet become such a simple and easily carried weapon, but military models are no longer just tested, but adopted by the armies of developed countries, such as Russia and the United States.

Interplanetary spaceships - Alexei Tolstoy

Photo: ROSCOSMOS

Humanity has known about the existence of rockets for at least two millennia: gunpowder tubes for fireworks began to be used in ancient China. But Russia was the first to decide to adapt them to interplanetary space flights.

The famous populist revolutionary Nikolai Kibalchich, a few days before his execution (he was a participant in the assassination attempt on Emperor Alexander II), put forward the idea of ​​a spacecraft with a controlled thrust vector. It was according to these drawings, armed with the theory of another famous compatriot, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, that Mstislav Los and Alexei Gusev built their interplanetary ship - the heroes of Alexei Tolstoy's novel "Aelita", published in 1923. And they flew on it to Mars, where they quickly staged a revolution - with all the ensuing consequences for themselves and for the Martians.

Paintball - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

Photo: wikipedia.org / Nado24

“It was something like a toy machine - with a comfortable grooved handle and a flat rectangular canister that was inserted from below, like a magazine. – What is this thing? I asked. “Blooper,” he said sullenly. - Give it here. I gave him the toy. “Blooper,” I said. - Which means they blurt out. And if you hit me?.. Wow, now it won’t be washed off in a year, you’ll have to change the wall.”

This is a dialogue between the characters of the novel Predatory Things of the Century, written in 1964. There can be nothing more than a paintball machine modern to us, the Strugatskys' "blooper"! So it would be quite possible to include this word in modern dictionaries, replacing the foreign "paintball" with it.

Submarine - Jules Verne

Photo: wikipedia.org

The French science fiction writer is considered one of the most brilliant visionaries, which is easily explained: Verne carefully followed all the latest in science and technology. And of course, he was aware that the Confederates used the submarine during the American Civil War.

But the flimsy pedal-powered Confederate shell is no match for the protagonist of the 1870 novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the mighty Nautilus, where everything runs on electricity. And the ability of Jules Verne's boat not to surface for a long time is also much closer to modern nuclear submarines. By the way, in the actual continuation of this novel - "The Mysterious Island" - Verne armed the Nautilus with torpedoes, but this was no longer a foresight: these naval weapons were successfully used in reality by that time.

Robot – Karel Capek

Czech writer Karel Capek not only predicted the appearance of robots - he, in fact, came up with the very word! It comes from the Czech "robota", meaning forced labor. For the first time, "robots" appeared in 1920 in the play "R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)", written by Karel Capek together with his brother Josef.

After that, robots literally conquered the world, becoming quite commonplace today. It is noteworthy that Prague, where the Czech writer wrote his famous play, is the birthplace of the distant ancestor of robots - the clay Golem. This artificial creature, capable of carrying out the commands of the owner, according to legend, was created by the righteous Prague rabbi Leo to protect his fellow tribesmen.

Communications Satellites – Arthur Clarke

Photo: NASA

Today, it never occurs to anyone that a colossal part of the global communication network is based on geostationary satellites: a TV or a telephone works - and that's good! Meanwhile, even seven decades ago, such an idea was not just revolutionary, but generally looked slanderous. But the future legend of world fiction, the Englishman Arthur Clark, who worked in the British Interplanetary Society, thought otherwise. What he wrote about in 1945 in his essay "Space Station: For the Application of Radio".

In it, he first substantiated the use of precisely geostationary, that is, located in orbit in a constant place above the Earth's surface, communication satellites. Clarke, a longtime enthusiast of space technology and interplanetary travel, came up with the idea based on his military experience: he served in the Royal Air Force and worked in special radio communications and radar.

The literature very often discusses the phenomenon of foresight, which is found in the works of various authors. Jules Verne researchers counted 98 out of 108 predictions that came true. But this is science fiction, and it can be said that not only he dreamed of submarines and flights to the moon. At the same time, similar thoughts were expressed by other people. But what about the sinking of the steamship Titan from the novel Futility, written in 1898 by the little-known science fiction writer Morgan Robertson. The action takes place on the ship "Titan". The main characteristics of the ship are: length 243 meters, displacement 70 thousand tons, engine power 50 thousand horsepower, speed 25 knots, 4 pipes, 3 propellers. On a cold April night, the ship collides with an iceberg and dies. This is the essence of the content of the novel. The most amazing thing is that 12 years later this scenario was fully realized in real life with the steamer "Titanic". All the technical parameters of the ships coincided, the place and causes of death, and even most of the names of the people who died in the crash.

We may be interested in the fact of the prophecy of Russian writers.

Almost a hundred years before the revolution and what followed, Mikhail Lermontov wrote the prophetic lines:

A year will come, a black year for Russia,

When the kings crown will fall;

The mob will forget their former love for them,

And the food of many will be death and blood;

When children, when innocent wives

The overthrown will not defend the law...

Mikhail Lermontov in the poem "Dream" even described his own death:

In the afternoon heat in the valley of Dagestan

With lead in my chest, I lay motionless;

A deep wound still smoking,

My blood dripped drop by drop.

Less than a year later, the poet died in a duel during his stay in the Caucasus.

Many poets and writers often had prophecies about their fate against the will of the authors from random, inadvertently thrown words, but these words were recorded on paper and, therefore, gained an independent life. And the life of words has its own laws and consequences. First of all, these consequences concern those who uttered these words. Here are some examples:

Prophecy in a poem by Nikolai Rubtsov: "I will die in Epiphany frosts." He died on January 19 - on the very day when Orthodox Baptism is celebrated.

The playwright Alexander Vampilov wrote in his notebook: "I know - I will never be old." And so it happened: he drowned in Baikal a few days before his 35th birthday. The poet and musician Yuri Vizbor in 1978 wrote the song "In Memory of the Departed", where there is such a line: "How I want to live another hundred years - well, maybe not a hundred, at least half." It was as if Vizbor himself measured out his earthly term - he lived exactly 50 years.

Vladimir Vysotsky in one of his poems predicted the time of his death: “Life is an alphabet: I’m already somewhere in“ tse-che-she-shche ”- I will leave this summer in a raspberry cloak.” The poems were written in the early 1980s. This summer, on July 25, Vysotsky died.

After the death of Valentin Pikul, his wife found a book with a blind spine in his library, and it contained a creative testament that ended with the words: “This was written by Valentin Savich Pikul, Russian, born July 13, 1928, died July 13, 19 ... years.” This was written in 1959, and he died on July 16, 1990, having made a mistake in the number by only three days.

Boris Pasternak suspected that the written word could become a program for later life and warned his contemporary poets against predicting their own death in verse.

Dostoevsky also possessed the gift of foresight, and in his “Diary of a Writer” for 1877 there are the following lines: “A terrible, colossal ... revolution is foreseen that will shake all countries with a change in the face of the world. But this will require a hundred million heads. The whole world will be flooded with rivers of blood… The rebellion will begin with atheism and the robbery of all wealth, They will begin to overthrow religion, destroy temples and turn them into stalls, flood the world with blood, and then they themselves will be frightened.” Here the writer predicted the approximate number of victims of the coming revolution (100 million), and in "Demons" - and its timing. Petenka Verkhovensky to the question: “When will everything start?” - answered: "Fifty years later ... It will begin at Maslenitsa (February), end after the Intercession (October)."

The predictions of the Russian writer Alexander Bogdanov are interesting in the story “Red Star”, in which back in 1904 he foresaw not only the features of the impending totalitarian rule, but even its symbolism, which was put in the title of the novel.

Among the prophecies and non-random coincidences, there are those when a Russian person does not know whether to cry or laugh. Half a century before the Bolshevik revolution, the satirist Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote the story "The History of a City", where under the "city of Foolov" more than one generation of Russian readers recognized the country in which they lived. The tyrant governor, says Shchedrin, as soon as he assumed power over the unfortunate city, canceled all the holidays, leaving only two. One was celebrated in spring, the other in autumn. That is exactly what the Bolsheviks did in the very first years of their reign, abolishing all traditional holidays in the country. Of the holidays they introduced, one was celebrated in the spring (May 1), the other in the fall (November 7). The coincidences don't end there. For Shchedrin, the spring holiday "serves as a preparation for the coming disasters." For the Bolsheviks, May 1 has always been a "day of review of the fighting forces of the proletariat" and was accompanied by calls to intensify the class struggle and to overthrow capitalism. In other words, he was focused on the disasters to come. As for the autumn holiday, according to Shchedrin, it is dedicated to "memories of the disasters already experienced." And as if on purpose or in mockery, November 7 - a holiday established by the Bolsheviks - was dedicated to the memory of the bloodshed of the revolution.

The literary works of Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR Ivan Efremov are interesting. He was interested in paleontology. Many finds did not fit into the then existing paradigm, so he spoke about their existence in his fantastic works. In addition, it should be noted that I. Efremov, in addition to foresight, also had forecasts based on the presence of scientific facts. This concerns, for example, the discovery of a diamond deposit in Siberia.

Below is a list of Ivan Efremov's "predictions" that came true:

The discovery of a diamond deposit in Yakutia is in the story “Diamond Pipe” (before Efremov, in 1840, geologist R.K. Maak concluded in his report that there should be kimberlite pipes and diamond placers on the Vilyui River.

The discovery of a large deposit of mercury ores in the Southern Altai - in the story "The Lake of Mountain Spirits".

The discovery of holography - in the story "Shadow of the Past".

The peculiarity of the behavior of liquid crystals is in the story "Fakaofo Atoll".

Three-dimensional television with a parabolic concave screen in the novel Andromeda Nebula (according to another version, it was already known).

A geostationary satellite that is always above one point on the earth's surface - in the novel "The Andromeda Nebula". In the novel, it is called a daily companion.

An exosuit ("jumping skeleton") that allows humans to overcome the heightened gravitational pull (in the novel The Andromeda Nebula).

A micro-cybernetic healing device that is ingested by the sick. Makes a diagnosis and heals from the inside (in the novel "Heart of the Serpent").

But Efremov was a scientist and his predictions could be based on the extrapolation of already known facts into the future, taking into account their possible development, so Efremov's predictions should be attributed to a special kind of scientist's intuition.

In 1945, A. Clark published an article entitled "Space Relays", in which he expressed a prophetic idea about the use of artificial Earth satellites in radio and television transmissions. At that not so distant time, no attention was paid to A. Clark's article, considering it the writer's fantasy. Eighteen years later, the Franklin Institute awarded him a gold medal for developing the idea of ​​space communications.

In 1947, Clark wrote the first story about the moon landing, predicting its geographic characteristics and human visitation.

A little time passed, and the writer's fantasy became reality. Moreover, in his works, Clarke often describes events that are almost impossible to predict based on the experience of our lives. Here is an example to prove this.

In his book 2001: A Space Odyssey, the science fiction writer tells of astronauts going into the depths of the universe in search of evidence that aliens participated in the origin and development of intelligent life on Earth in the distant past. The path of the astronauts lay past the planet Jupiter, they were faced with great difficulties associated with a huge mysterious black monolith.

A little time has passed since the publication of A. Clarke's book, and the representative of the Earth really visited other worlds, even stepping on the lunar surface. Particularly surprising in the writer's predictions was the fact that the crew of the Apollo 8 spacecraft, which launched to the moon, actually saw a black monolith in space.

How can such events be predicted?

The fate of the American writer J. Collins is interesting. He described his own death in his last story. Collins was also a test pilot and tested the Grumman Hellday aircraft. He had the last test of the aircraft. It was necessary to find out how the plane comes out of the dive. Everything went well, but ended exactly as he described in the story. The plane could not get out of the dive. True, in the latter case it is difficult to say whether the story was a prediction of tragic events, or whether events unfolded as it was programmed in Collins' brain. It is possible that he fit into the image so much that he could no longer cope with the subconscious and the plane in the same way that his hero could not cope with the plane.