7 Eerie Ways That H.G. Wells Predicted the Future

Policymic - If H.G. Wells were still alive, September 21 would be his 147th birthday. Who knows, he is one of the greatest science fiction writers, he might have figured out a way to live forever and is hiding out somewhere. Shake your head all you want at the unlikeliness of that idea, but take a moment to consider the seven things below that he predicted well before they actually were invented and you might reconsider.

1. Heat Rays

The Martian invaders in Wells' 1898 War of the Worlds relied on a heat ray as their primary weapon. "Slowly a humped shape rose out of the pit, and the ghost of a beam of light seemed to flicker out from it. Forthwith flashes of actual flame, a bright glare leaping from one to another, sprang from the scattered group of men. It was as if some invisible jet impinged upon them and flashed into white flame. It was as if each man were suddenly and momentarily turned to fire."

The U.S. military has developed its own heat ray weapon. The Active Denial System, designed to be a non-lethal weapon against enemy troops, projects a wavelength that causes an intense burning sensation without leaving permanent damage. The U.S. Marines demonstrated the weapons maritime uses just last week.

2. Genetic Engineering

A central theme in 1896's The Island of Doctor Moreau is genetic engineering, specifically animal modification. "I began with a sheep, and killed it after a day and a half by a slip of the scalpel. I took another sheep, and made a thing of pain and fear and left it bound up to heal. It looked quite human to me when I had finished it; but when I went to it I was discontented with it."

Wells envisioned actually sewing parts of creatures together to make a new whole. In reality, genetic science works in a more exacting way and given us everything from herbicide tolerant crops to glow-in-the-dark cats.

 

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Ray Bradbury - Bio

by Chris Jepsen & Richard Johnston
 

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Ray Douglas Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois, on August 22, 1920. 

He was the third son of Leonard Spaulding Bradbury and Esther Marie Moberg Bradbury. They gave him the middle name "Douglas," after the actor, Douglas Fairbanks.

He never lived up to his namesake's reputation for swashbuckling adventure on the high seas. Instead, Bradbury's great adventures would take place behind a typewriter, in the realm of imagination. Today, as an author, essayist, playwright, screenwriter, lecturer, poet and visionary, Ray Bradbury is known as one of America's greatest creative geniuses.

 

Bradbury's early childhood in Waukegan was characterized by his loving extended family. These formative years provided the foundations for both the author and his stories.

In Bradbury's works of fiction, 1920s Waukegan becomes "Greentown," Illinois. Greentown is a symbol of safety and home, and often provides a contrasting backdrop to tales of fantasy or menace. In Greentown, Bradbury's favorite uncle sprouts wings, traveling carnivals conceal supernatural powers, and his grandparents provide room and board to Charles Dickens. 

 

Between 1926 and 1933, the Bradbury family moved back and forth between Waukegan and Tucson, Arizona. In 1931, young Ray began writing his own stories on butcher paper. 

 

In 1934, the Bradbury family moved to Los Angeles, California. As a teenager, Bradbury often roller-skated through Hollywood, trying to spot celebrities. He befriended other talented and creative people, like special effects maestro Ray Harryhausen and radio star George Burns. 

 

In fact, it was Burns who gave Bradbury his first pay as a writer -- for contributing a joke to the Burns & Allen Show.

Bradbury attended Los Angeles High School. He was active in the drama club and planned to become an actor. 

However, two of his teachers recognized a greater talent in Bradbury, and encouraged his development as a writer. Snow Longley Housh taught him about poetry and Jeannet Johnson taught him to write short stories. Over 60 years later, Bradbury's work bears the indelible impressions left by these two women. 

As his high school years progressed, Bradbury grew serious about becoming a writer. Outside of class, he contributed to fan publications and joined the Los Angeles Science Fiction League. At school, he improved his grades and joined the Poetry Club.

 

Bradbury's formal education ended with his high school graduation in 1938. However, he continued to educate himself. He sold newspapers on Los Angeles street corners all day, but spent his nights in the library. The hours between newspaper editions were spent at his typewriter. 

 

His first published short story was "Hollerbochen's Dilemma," printed in 1938 in Imagination!, an amateur fan magazine. In 1939, Bradbury published four issues of his own fan magazine, Futuria Fantasia, writing much of the content himself. His first paid publication, a short story titled "Pendulum," appeared in Super Science Stories in 1941. 

As he honed his writing skills, Bradbury often looked to established writers for guidance. During those early years, his mentors included Henry Kuttner, Leigh Brackett, Robert Heinlein and Henry Hasse.

 

At last, in 1942, Bradbury wrote "The Lake" -- the story in which he discovered his distinctive writing style. The following year, he gave up selling newspapers and began to write full-time. In 1945 his short story "The Big Black and White Game" was selected for Best American Short Stories. That same year, Bradbury traveled through Mexico to collect Indian masks for the Los Angeles County Museum.

 

In 1946, he met his future wife, Marguerite "Maggie" McClure. A graduate of George Washington High School (1941) and UCLA, Maggie was working as a clerk in a book shop when they met.      

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What Ever Happened to Quicksand?

Slate - The fourth-graders were unanimous: Quicksand doesn’t scare them, not one bit. If you’re a 9- or 10-year-old at the P.S. 29 elementary school in Brooklyn, N.Y., you’ve got more pressing concerns: Dragons. Monsters. Big waves at the beach that might separate a girl from her mother. Thirty years ago, quicksand might have sprung up at recess, in pools of discolored asphalt or the dusty corners of the sandbox—step in the wrong place, and you’d die. But not anymore, a boy named Zayd tells me. “I think people used to be afraid of it,” he says. His classmates nod. “It was before we were born,” explains Owen. “Maybe it will come back one day.”

For now, quicksand has all but evaporated from American entertainment—rejected even by the genre directors who once found it indispensable. There isn’t any in this summer’s fantasy blockbuster Prince of Persia: Sands of Time or in last year’s animated jungle romp Up. You won’t find quicksand in The Last Airbender or Avatar, either. Giant scorpions emerge from the sand in Clash of the Titans, but no one gets sucked under. And what about Lost—a tropical-island adventure series replete with mud ponds and dangling vines? That show, which ended in May, spanned six seasons and roughly 85 hours of television airtime—all without a single step into quicksand. “We were a little bit concerned that it would just be cheesy,” says the show’s Emmy-winning writer and executive producer, Carlton Cuse. “It felt too clichéd. It felt old-fashioned.”         More