THE FUTURE REVISITED
GUEST OF HONOR SPEECH AT THE XIXth WORLD SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION SEATTLE, 1961
THE FUTURE REVISITED
Madame Chairman, Banquet Chairman, members of the World Science Fiction Convention, friends-protocol now requires that I make a speech.
I don’t know why this is so. I’m quite sure that nothing I can say tonight can compete with the entertainment offered last night.
There will be a question period. But right now, under a precedent established at the First World Science Fiction Convention, I am expected to produce some Big Thoughts giving clear evidence of a Deep Thinker.
It has been just twenty years since the last time I did this. A good interval, I think-it gives time for a new generation of fans to grow up and thereby reduces the likelihood that discrepancies between the Deep Thoughts on the first occasion and the Deep Thoughts on the next occasion will show up-it lets me speak freely.
Is there anyone here tonight who was at the Denver Convention in 1941? Do you recall what I said on that occasion?
You see? That shows you what one gets for deep thoughts. My subject twenty years ago was THE DISCOVERY OF THE FUTURE. My subject tonight is THE FUTURE REVISITED-and we’ll check up a little, not too closely, on whether what I said twenty years ago still makes sense.
If you all will be so gracious as to invite me again, twenty years from tonight, I’ll be happy to accept. 1981, that will be-I can’t accept for 1984; Big Brother will be watching.
We might hold the 1981 convention on the Moon, at Luna City. I understand that there are very few conventions on the Moon-and these affairs have been growing more and more unconventional over the years-so we should call it Looneycon.
My subject in 1981 will be-obviously-THE FUTURE…WHATEVER BECAME OF IT?
But it may be more practical-more in accordance with the wishes of the authorities-for us to hold the 1981 Convention in some small garden city of the future located on the Arctic Ocean in the far north of Siberia.
We can call it the SlaveCon.
I went back and reread that speech of twenty years ago in order to see just what slips I would have to cover up or explain away tonight.
I found that it was not going to be necessary to cover up-largely because I had been too cagey to make very many specific predictions. However, I did make two hard-nosed predictions.
I predicted that the years immediately following 1941 would be a period of great and radical change change so great that most people would not be able to understand it, assimilate it, cope with it-and that the whole world would start behaving irrationally-crazy.
Does anyone want to dispute that it has? If so, I won’t argue-I’ll simply refer them to the headlines in tonight’s paper.
I also said that science fiction fans, because they were interested in the future and believed in change, would not be so shocked by these drastic changes we have seen these past twenly years and thereby stood a better chance of not going crazy when the rest of the world did.
I can’t prove that I was correct in this prediction-or pious hope-by referring you to the headlines. But-I can’t see — that science fiction fans are one whit crazier than they were twenty years ago.
The second firm prediction I made in 1941 was a dead cinch, no harder than predicting tomorrow’s sunrise-at least it seems that easy, looking back instead of forward. I said that the series of wars the world was in would go on for five, ten, twenty, possibly fifty years — Now look at the damned thing, twenty years later!
Anybody here with a transistor radio? Will you keep it tuned to Coneirad, please?
Let’s update that prediction tonight. Things are even worse tonight than they looked in 1941, with World War II already raging and Pearl Harbor only weeks away. 1941 looks like the Good Old Days now — There is no peace in the future for any of us…even the youngest here.
In .propiiesying tonight I am going to be less cagey, more specific, than I was in 1941 — although not so specific as to try to guess tomorrow’s headlines. In the: wisely cynical words of L. Sprague de Camp: “It does not pay a prophet to be too specific.”