2 May 2013

Movies released
X2:X-Men United released 2003
Iron Man released 2008

I grew up reading Marvel Comics in the 1960s and Iron Man was a title I ignored as much as possible. Tony Stark was an old, drunk capitalist war-monger. They didn't play up the hero-scientist angle that much and even if they did, hello! Reed Richards and Charles Xavier already existed, so Stark as hero-scientist seemed stale and second rate.

And the topper: The artist given credit for co-creating Iron Man is Don Heck. Don't get me started on Don Heck.

But the movies. They let Robert Downey be Robert Downey and it worked very well. At least the first one did and The Avengers movie. I didn't like the second one and I might see the third, but I haven't yet.

Prediction: January 1940: War begins in a clash between the Germans and Poles at Danzig. The war between them lasts 10 years and ends inconclusively. Britain remains neutral. The Americans and Japanese also go to war, again ending with no great conclusion.

Predictor: H.G. Wells in The Shape of Things to Come, published 1933

Reality: Wells gets full points for predicting the combatants but no points for predicting the outcomes. Seeing Hitler as a real threat in 1933 took some imagination, but he wasn't alone. Winston Churchill's big push in Parliament in the late 1920s and early 1930s was that India couldn't possibly govern itself, but by 1933 he took on the job of being the back bencher warning about Hitler.

As for U.S. vs. Japan, the American military man Billy Mitchell saw this as being the next possible war as early as 1924, including the war would start when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and Clark Field in the Philippines on a Sunday. Mitchell absolutely gets full points, though to be fair, if you warn of something and it doesn't happen for 17 years, you can't blame people for forgetting.

Blog business: Welcome to the first change in the weekly schedule of the blog. My Big Three of Heinlein, Watkins and Clarke made a lot of predictions with dates on them, but the number is finite, so over the next few months you will see them phased out and replaced with others who made a lot of predictions with date. For May and much of June, Arthur C. Clarke will be alternating on Thursdays with H.G. Wells, another guy who wasn't afraid to predict the future and put actual dates on his predictions.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

Alternate Fridays means French postcards, the kind men like!  Especially men who lust for knowledge... OF THE FUTURE!

 
Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!