Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

will be in some of them- and some may involve atomic weapons. But there will not be

that all-destroying nuclear holocaust that forms the background of so many SF

stories. There are three reasons for this: The United States, the Soviet Union, and

the People’s Republic of China.

Why? Because the three strongest countries in the world (while mutually

detesting each the other two) have nothing to gain and everything to lose in an

allout swapping of H-bombs. Because Kremlin bosses are not idiots and neither are

those in Beijing (Peiping)(Peking).

If another country-say Israel, India, or the South African Republic-gets

desperate and tosses an A- or H-bomb, that country is likely to receive three phone

calls simultaneously, one from each of the Big Three:

“You have exactly three minutes to back down. Then we destroy you.”

After World War II I never expected that our safety would ever depend on a

massive split in Communist International-but that is exactly what has happened.

1950 Here are things we won’t get soon, if ever:

Travel through time.

Travel faster than the speed of light.

“Radio” transmission of matter.

Manlike robots with manlike reactions.

Laboratory creation of life.

Real understanding of what “thought” is and how it is related to matter.

Scientific proof of personal survival after death.

Nor a permanent end to war. (I don’t like that prediction any better than

you do.)

1950 Prediction of gadgets is a parlor trick anyone can learn; but only a

fool would attempt to predict details of future history (except as fiction, so

labeled); there are too many unknowns and no techniques for integrating them even if

they were known.

Even to make predictions about overall trends in technology is now most

difficult. In fields where before World War II there was one man working in public,

there are now ten, or a hundred, working in secret. There may be six men in the

country who have a clear picture of what is going on in science today.There may not

be even one.

This is in itself a trend. Many leading scientists consider it a factor as

disabling to us as the nonsense of Lysenkoism is to Russian technology. Nevertheless

there are clear-cut trends which are certain to make this coming era enormously more

productive and interesting than the frantic one we have just passed through. Among

them are:

Cybernetics: The study of communication and control

of mechanisms and organisms. This includes the wonderful field of mechanical

and electronic “brains”-but is not limited to it. (These “brains” are a factor in

themselves that will speed up technical progress the way a war does.)

Semantics: A field which seems concerned only with definitions of words. It

is not; it is a frontal attack on epistemology-that is to say, how we know what we

know, a subject formerly belonging to long-haired philosophers.

New tools of mathematics and logic, such as calculus of statement, Boolean

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logic, morphological analysis, generalized symbology, newly invented mathematics of

every sort-there is not space even to name these enormous fields, but they offer us

hope in every field- medicine, social relations, biology, economics, anything.

Biochemistry: Research into the nature of protoplasm, into enzyme chemistry,

viruses, etc., give hope not only that we may conquer disease, but that we may

someday understand the mechanisms of life itself. Through this, and with the aid of

cybernetic machines and radioactive isotopes, we may eventually acquire a rigor of

chemistry. Chemistry is not a discipline today; it is a jungle. We know that

chemical behavior depends on the number of orbital electrons in an atom and that

physical and chemical properties follow the pattern called the Periodic Table. We

don’t know much else, save by cut-and-try, despite the great size and importance of

the chemical industry. When chemistry becomes a discipline, mathematical chemists

will design new materials, predict their properties, and tell engineers how to make

them-without ever entering a laboratory. We’ve got a long way to go on that one!

Nucleonics: We have yet to find out what makes the atom tick. Atomic

power?-yes, we’ll have it, in convenient packages-when we understand the nucleus.

The field of radioisotopes alone is larger than was the