"I find the prospect of predicting the
#future incredibly dismal – even offensive. A predictable future is set in stone, immune to human agency. A predictable future runs on rails, and we're the prisoners of
#history, tied to the tracks...
My intention isn't to demoralize you into tying yourself to history's tracks – I'm here to show you how to grab the wheel and steer off the rails altogether."
-
@pluralistic https://pluralistic.net/2026/10/27/tied-to-the-tracks/#SFF #SciFi #Books #Writing #Tech #Politics #News #World
![Headline and text from article: History is something you do (permalink) Prediction is hard. Especially about the future. That Yogi Berra gem proves that you don't have to be a science fiction writer to get irritated with people insisting that you must <br />know what's going to happen tomorrow, but (as a sf writer), I can tell you that this is one of our main occupational hazards. Obviously, this is a self-inflicted injury. Our genre is full of big names who self-mythologized as scientific Nostradamuses. <br />From the "future history" bar-charts in Heinlein's books (I was once on a panel with Robert Silverberg where he referred to RAH as "Robert A Timeline") to the McGuffin of Asimov's Foundation series: a "scientific" discipline <br />that could predict the trajectory of human civilization for millennia into the future. But me, I find the prospect of predicting the future incredibly dismal – even offensive. A predictable future is set in stone, immune to human agency. A predictable <br />future runs on rails, and we're the prisoners of history, tied to the tracks.](https://assets.newsie.social/media_attachments/files/117/514/798/498/955/461/original/977cde9672ef4b8a.png "Headline and text from article: History is something you do (permalink) Prediction is hard. Especially about the future. That Yogi Berra gem proves that you don't have to be a science fiction writer to get irritated with people insisting that you must <br />know what's going to happen tomorrow, but (as a sf writer), I can tell you that this is one of our main occupational hazards. Obviously, this is a self-inflicted injury. Our genre is full of big names who self-mythologized as scientific Nostradamuses. <br />From the "future history" bar-charts in Heinlein's books (I was once on a panel with Robert Silverberg where he referred to RAH as "Robert A Timeline") to the McGuffin of Asimov's Foundation series: a "scientific" discipline <br />that could predict the trajectory of human civilization for millennia into the future. But me, I find the prospect of predicting the future incredibly dismal – even offensive. A predictable future is set in stone, immune to human agency. A predictable <br />future runs on rails, and we're the prisoners of history, tied to the tracks.")
