Refrigerator Art
God and I were talking about how some science fiction tries to predict the future and often gets it wrong. We bandied back and forth for a bit about flying cars and industrial robots and things of that ilk. We went on to more soft science and agreed that George Orwell’s 1984 is turning out to be much more prophetic than we like, even if it’s happening some thirty years or so later than George’s arbitrary date. I also pointed out that we’re starting to move towards Asimov’s psychohistory but she wouldn’t tell me how soon we might get there.
Then God gave me some insight about how hard it is to get the details right. She said if you ever want to imagine the difficulty of detailing the future, try to imagine predicting, even years after the invention of refrigeration, how large a market there would be for refrigerator magnets.
And then try to imagine convincing the readers of your book that someone makes a living selling them.
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