Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- A quick tour through the book
- Acknowledgments
- Prologue: Blog entry from Jonathan Hey
- 1 Beginnings of a revolution
- 2 The hardware
- 3 The software is in the holes
- 4 Programming languages and software engineering
- 5 Algorithmics
- 6 Mr. Turing’s amazing machines
- 7 Moore’s law and the silicon revolution
- 8 Computing gets personal
- 9 Computer games
- 10 Licklider’s Intergalactic Computer Network
- 11 Weaving the World Wide Web
- 12 The dark side of the web
- 13 Artificial intelligence and neural networks
- 14 Machine learning and natural language processing
- 15 The end of Moore’s law
- 16 The third age of computing
- 17 Computers and science fiction – an essay
- Epilogue: From Turing’s padlocked mug to the present day
- Appendix 1 Length scales
- Appendix 2 Computer science research and the information technology industry
- How to read this book
- Notes
- Suggested reading
- Figure credits
- Name index
- General index
17 - Computers and science fiction – an essay
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- A quick tour through the book
- Acknowledgments
- Prologue: Blog entry from Jonathan Hey
- 1 Beginnings of a revolution
- 2 The hardware
- 3 The software is in the holes
- 4 Programming languages and software engineering
- 5 Algorithmics
- 6 Mr. Turing’s amazing machines
- 7 Moore’s law and the silicon revolution
- 8 Computing gets personal
- 9 Computer games
- 10 Licklider’s Intergalactic Computer Network
- 11 Weaving the World Wide Web
- 12 The dark side of the web
- 13 Artificial intelligence and neural networks
- 14 Machine learning and natural language processing
- 15 The end of Moore’s law
- 16 The third age of computing
- 17 Computers and science fiction – an essay
- Epilogue: From Turing’s padlocked mug to the present day
- Appendix 1 Length scales
- Appendix 2 Computer science research and the information technology industry
- How to read this book
- Notes
- Suggested reading
- Figure credits
- Name index
- General index
Summary
No one saw these mice coming. No one, that is, in my field, writing science fictions. Oh, a few novels were written about those Big Brains, a few New Yorker cartoons were drawn showing those immense electric craniums that needed whole warehouses to THINK in. But no one in all of future writing foresaw those big brutes dieted down to fingernail earplug size so you could shove Moby Dick in one ear and pull Job and Ecclesiastes out the other.
Ray BradburyEarly visions
The British science fiction writer, Brian Aldiss, traces the origin of science fiction to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in 1818. In her book, the unwise scientist, Victor Frankenstein, deliberately makes use of his knowledge of anatomy, chemistry, electricity, and physiology to create a living creature. An alternative starting point dates back to the second half of the nineteenth century with the writing of Jules Verne (B.17.1) and Herbert George (H. G.) Wells (B.17.2). This was a very exciting time for science – in 1859 Charles Darwin had published the Origin of Species; in 1864 James Clerk Maxwell had unified the theories of electricity and magnetism; and in 1869 Mendeleev had brought some order to chemistry with his Periodic Table of the Elements, and Joule and Kelvin were laying the foundations of thermodynamics. Verne had the idea of combining modern science with an adventure story to create a new type of fiction. After publishing his first such story “Five Weeks in a Balloon” in 1863, he wrote:
I have just finished a novel in a new form, a new form – do you understand? If it succeeds, it will be a gold mine.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Computing UniverseA Journey through a Revolution, pp. 333 - 358Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014