Let's write about science fiction as prophesy

Jules Verne (1828-1905) was a French author best known for his tales of adventure, including Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Around the World in Eighty Days. A true visionary, Verne foresaw the skyscraper, the submarine, and the airplane, among many other inventions, and is now regarded as one of the fathers of science fiction.

Born: August 22, 1920 and died June 5, 2012 in Los Angeles, California. He is the author of The Martian Chronicles (1950), an account of man's colonization of Mars, and the book established Bradbury's reputation as an author of quality science fiction.

Read more: https://www.notablebiographies.com/Be-Br/Bradbury-Ray.html#ixzz7Jl2rCoNL

Let's add Ray Bradbury to the short list of sci-fi prophets. Although he is certainly included in the list of popular Science Fiction authors, his novel Fahrenheit 451 tops the list for being the most prophetic in the genre, in my opinion. 

Margaret Atwood: is the author of The Handmaid's Tale

Canadian writer Margaret Atwood celebrated Bradbury's gift of prophesy in her essay published in the 60th anniversary edition of Fahrenheit 451.

Atwood is a Canadian novelist and poet whose international honors include a wide range of American, British and European literary awards and award nominations. The Handmaid's Tale along with other Atwood novels are often regarded as science fiction, but she considers them speculative works, or at most, earthbound sociological science fiction, firmly grounded in projections of today's reality.  In other words "prophesy". 

She calls Bradbury's book Fahrenheit 451 "earthbound sociological science fiction".  In her opinion, the novel projects elements of the present into an all-too-possible future and this visionary expose is the reason why the  novel has endured.  (In other words, "prophesy".)

This is what Margaret Atwood wrote in tribute to Ray Bradbury and Fahrenheit 451:

As a young teenager, I devoured Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, by flashlight.  It gave me nightmares.  In the early 1950's, television was just rolling forth, and people sat mesmerized in front of their flickering sets, eating their dinners of of TV trays.  Surely, it was said, "the family" was doomed, since the traditional dinner time was obsolete. Films and books too were about to fall victim ot the new all-consuming medium.  My own parents refused to get a TV, so I had to sneak over to friends' houses to gape at The Ed Sullivan Show.

But, when not doing that, I fed my reading addiction , whenever, however, whatever. Hence, Fahrenheit 451.  In this riveting book, books themselves are condemned- all books included.  The very act of reading is considered detrimental to social order, because it causes people to think, and then, to distrust authorities.  Instead of books, the public is offered conformity via four-wall TV, with the sound piped directly into their heads via shell-shaped earbuds (a brilliant proleptic leap on the part of Bradbury.  In other words "prophesy".)

In the plot, the main character is Montag, who is called "Fireman".  Because, his job is to burn each and every book uncovered by the state's spies and informers. Nevertheless, little by little, Montag gets converted to reading and he finally joins the underground: a dedicated band of individuals sworn to preserve world literature by becoming the living repositories of the books they have memorized.

Fahrenheit 451 predated theories about how media, and social media, shape people, not just the reverse. We interact with our creations and they themselves act upon us. Now that we're in the midst of a new wave of innovative media technologies, it's time to reread this Bradbury classic, which poses the eternal question about who and what do we want to be?

In Fahrenheit 451, books were banned in an attempt to keep society happy, or so they were told, believing that if people did not have to form opinions for themselves, there would be less conflict, and society would be happier. ... While this book is fictional, book burning and banning is not fictional activity.