DagwoodIII

The exact same people run both the fossil fuel industry and nuclear power.

They ‘compete’ the same way professional wrestlers do.

Read the same book…

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_World_of_Star_Trek

My favorite story is the one where a company that made automatic doors sent a letter asking how they got their door to move so smoothly…

The people writing science fiction were trying to make a living.

They wrote for magazines and TV shows that depended on advertising. A bunch of midcentury advertisers weren’t going to have a Black wom,an President.

Another thing to consider is how much change you can put into a story and still expect the average reader to keep up.

There was an article about an early Star Trek episode. One scene involved a couple of lines about a salt shaker. The production team went out and brought a bunch of wild looking salt shakers. [1960’s, remember?] None of the ‘futuristic’ looking salt shakers was any good for the scene, because they realized the TV audience wouldn’t understand what that funny looking thing was. In the end they used an ordinary looking shaker.

“The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress” is one of the best self-aware computer novels.

I love that in the novel the computer has already become self aware before it attempts something really difficult - creating a CGI face for itself

Nuclear energy was subsidized to make atom bombs seem less threatening.

If we’d spent as much on renewables and improving the power grid we’d have been off the fossil fuel addiction years ago.

Three Mile Island was a near melt down years before Chernobyl.

In ‘Starship Troopers’ the narrator is amazed that the military has musical instruments that sound like the real thing, but can fit in your pocket. One major plot point hinges on the hero getting a hand written letter delivered by a FTL craft.