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33 years ago, science fiction writer Arkady Strugatsky died
In an interview, Boris Strugatsky said that science fiction writers were "worthless predictors and prophets." However, science fiction writers do not "sow" new inventions and technologies, but "loosen the soil for sowing" and, at best, do not need accurate forecasts of human development. According to the Strugatskys, he is very skeptical about the prophecies of Nostradamus and the like.
“My experience shows that serious and specific details of the future can only be predicted by pure chance,” the author emphasized.
But much of what Boris and his brother Arkady Strugatsky described in numerous science fiction novels decades ago has become reality.
In 1964, the Strugatsky brothers described the Lyapnik paintball gun in their novel "Marauder of the Century". The first paintball game using pneumatic rifles to shoot paintballs took place in New Hampshire, USA, in 1981.
The Strugatskys describe the prototype paintball gun as "something like a toy machine gun" with "a comfortable knurled handle and a flat rectangular cartridge" that fits into the hood like a Kalashnikov magazine.
"What is this?" I asked.
"That's nonsense," he said gloomily. "Give it to me."
I gave him a toy.
"That's nonsense." I said. "So they said it casually. What if you hit me?" I saw the wall. "Wow, now I won't be able to clean it in a year and I'll have to replace the walls."
In the 1979 novel The Beetle in the Anthill, the hero reports that getting the information he needs from the Great Planetary Information Center (GPI) requires "all the experience and dexterity needed to handle the information channels." Finding information about an alien named Shchekn required sending 11 queries to a prototype Wikipedia.
The massive planetary information center is accessible to all inhabitants of the planet, but many sections can only be read by selected specialists with special access rights. At the same time, it does not contain pornography and spam. In the novel BVO - "The 8th - or already the 9th?" - Wonders of the World".
In "Predatory Things of the Century," the Strugatskys predicted the emergence of discos, raves, and techno parties. Young people have a hard time in the utopian city of "Land of Fools," where the protagonist of the novel "Liberated from the Nazis" appears.
“People – men and women, teenagers, boys and girls – stood close together, shifting from foot to foot, waiting for something. Conversation was barely audible. Cigarettes burned here and there, illuminating pursed lips and drawn-in cheeks. Then in the silence a clock began to strike, and a huge lampshade shone brightly over the square. There were three of them: red, blue and green, irregularly shaped, round and triangular. The crowd shook and froze. People walked quietly around me, putting out cigarettes. The light went out for a moment, then red-blue-green, red-blue-green...
After this, the hero describes a “numb, upturned face” and “motionless, bulging eyes” and a loud female cry: “Dreshka!” The people froze, screaming and rhythmically clapping their hands, and then “suddenly began to beat, convulse, and grab each other furiously.”
The same novel describes some "illiterates". This is similar to modern downshifters (people who leave prestigious offices in big cities and move to the wilderness and nature).
"The inventor of a perpetual motion machine, seething with passion, and a semi-vegetable flower, ready to walk independently in laziness, what do these people have in common? The answer is: personal demands are extremely low. The level of desires of all "non-gourmets" is so low that it pushes them beyond the limits of civilization. Because they do not participate in the usual process of growing, satisfying and inventing desires," wrote the Strugatskys. Evil (1988).
However, this is most likely satire, not a prediction. The concept of "downshifter" did not exist in the 1980s, but "non-eaters" can be found among the Strugatskys' fellow citizens, representatives of the technical intelligentsia. , received 120 rubles a month and had no ambitions.
In their novel Noon of the 22nd Century, written in the early 1960s, the Strugatsky family described their “delivery line” – a system for ordering groceries to their homes.
"Who eats at home?
— Eat at home.
"Well, Zhenechka," Sheila said. "Do you want us to move to the city? There's a line for delivery, so you can eat at home as much as you want."
“But I don’t want to go to the city,” Zhenya said stubbornly. “I want to be in your arms.”
You can also order other goods through the delivery line, which connects the Strugatskys’ idea with the modern market.
In the story "The Guy from the Underworld", written in 1973, the Strugatskys depicted a rather terrible parody of the 20th century, which inhumanely ruined the lives of millions of people. In this work, the main character is a veteran of another senseless massacre, suffering from post-traumatic disorder and sharing memories of the final battle. He participated in the Empire's war for the Alai Principality and commanded a missile launcher, which was dragged by a giant cockroach.
In our time, rocket launchers in the form of multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS) have managed without cockroaches. Although this type of weapon initially appeared before World War II, the greatest successes in rocket launchers were achieved at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries.
"The armored vehicles crawl out of the jungle in fours, belching fire and fanning out, and four more crawl out after them. The village was burning. There was smoke above the trench, but not a soul. The field kitchen next to the trading post was overturned, beer was pouring out of it in a brown mess, steam was billowing. My flare gun was also overturned, and the cockroaches were piled on top of each other in the ditch. In short, snake milk with a comfortable posture! <...> Finally, they put the grenade launcher on its wheels, rolled it into a ditch and burned the armored personnel carrier. "I already have two cockroaches, and I don't know where the third one went."
In the 1963 story "Distant Rainbow," space explorers experiment with synthetic foods. The work mentions fake steaks, synthetic foods, and quasi-biological patties.
In 2013, Mark Post, a pharmacologist at Maastricht University, introduced people to the world’s first hamburger made from test-tube meat. And in 2023, Forbes magazine reported that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had given Upside Foods and Good Meat permission to sell meat grown from animal stem cells.
However, today synthetic meat is much more expensive than real meat, reaching tens of thousands of dollars per kilogram. Experts believe that such meat can be more harmful than natural meat. After all, the moment when it is not necessary to kill an animal to enjoy a cutlet is still far away.
In the 1973 film Hell Boy, the veteran we mentioned earlier marvels at the marvelous technology of the future Earth. Video calls via computers and phones are now commonplace, but half a century ago they were fantastic.
“He sits in front of screens, and each screen has a face or two, and he talks to all of them,” one character noted in the Strugatsky family’s Zero-related story.
And in 1979, in "Beetles in an Anthill," the Strugatskys described a "videophone." In fact, the problem with the device arose at the time of its presentation. "During this discussion, at 19:33, the videophone began to hum. Andrei, who was sitting closest to the device, pointed his finger at the keys. The screen turned on, but there was no video."
It is worth mentioning other “prophecies” of the Strugatskys, for example, Urma, a robot whose behavior is determined by a brain with “18 million logical cells”, a prototype of modern neural networks.
Or a self-driving car. "I saw him walk up to his long car, plop down on the seat, fiddle with the driver's console, lean back and immediately fall asleep. The car rolled carefully across the square, picking up speed and disappearing into the shadows and greenery of the alley." The writer brothers depicted the technology of the future in "Marauder of the Century."
The Strugatskys also made predictions about the current social structure of the world. But that's a completely different story.