PROPHECY
September 24, 1949: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
EDITOR’S NOTE: With the motion picture about to start shooting, and with Robert at work on the next juvenile for Scribner ‘s, a request came in from Cosmopolitan for an article about prediction of what the U. S. would be like in the year 2000. In this letter Robert was asking for information about what sort of article the editors would like-he made some suggestions about it.
When the article was finished, Cosmopolitan turned it down. It sold to Galaxy and was published as ‘ ‘Pandora’s Box.” The article was periodically updated, and the most recent version can be found in Expanded Universe.
…Under “treatment” come a couple of other questions: This article is to be prophetic. Fine-that’s my business; I make my living as a professional prophet of what science will bring to us. But such an article-nonfiction-must consider and to some extent report the present status in various fields before the author can go out into the wild blue yonder with predictions. Therefore, I inquire how much reporting do they [Cosmopolitan] want of the sort which one finds in Scientific American, Science News Letter, Nature, etc., and how much speculation or prediction do they want? The two things are closely related, but are not the same thing. Also, how far in the future shall I go? (For example, everybody knows that the cancer men, radiation men, and biochemists stand an excellent chance of perfecting selective radiation treatment of certain types of cancer in the very near future by finding ways to bond short half-life isotopes to some compound which a particular type of cancer will pick up selectively.)
Or should I go well into the future and consider the necessary statistical effect of food supply, geriatrics, life-span research, public health, etc., in forcing the development of a brand-new art, planetary engineering, as it affects the growth of colonies on the planet Mars?
The synthesizing prophet has another advantage over the specialist; he knows, from experience and by examining the efforts of other prophets of his type in the past that his ‘ ‘wildest” predictions are more likely to come true than the ones in which he lost his nerve and was cautious. This statement is hard to believe but can be checked by comparing past predictions with present facts. (Show me the man who honestly believed in the atom bomb twenty years ago-but H. G. Wells predicted it in 1911.) (The “wild fantasies” of Jules Verne turned out to be much too conservative.)
How can one spot a competent synthesizing prophet? Only by his batting average. If Cosmopolitan thinks my record of accomplished predictions is good enough to warrant it, then let’s by all means go all out and I’ll make some serious predictions that will make their hair stand on end. If they want to play safe, I’ll do an Inquiring Reporter job and we’ll limit it to what the specialists are willing to say. But I can tell them ahead of time that such an article will be more respectable today and quite unrespected ten years from now-for that is no way to whip up successful prophecy.
…I would proceed as follows:
First, I would cut down the field by limiting myself to (a) subjects in which the changes would matter to the readers personally and not too remotely. A new principle in electronics I would ignore unless I saw an important tie into the lives of ordinary people, (b) subjects which are dramatic and entertaining either in themselves or in their effects. Space travel is such a subject, both ways. So is life-span research. On the other hand, a cure for hoof-and-mouth disease, while urgently needed, is much harder to dramatize, (c) subjects which can be explained. The connection between parapsychology and nuclear engineering is dramatic potentially but impossible to explain convincingly.
Since the article is for popular consumption I would wish to hook it, if possible, with some startling piece of quoted dialog, use illustrative anecdote if possible, and end it with some dramatic prediction.
December 20, 1955: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
Please tell Howard Browne [editor of Amazing Stories and Fantastic] that I accept his incredible offer and that ms. will arrive by 10 January-but that I expect a copy of that celebration issue, inscribed by him to me, or I shall go into the corner and stick pins in wax images.