Expanded Universe

by Robert A. Heinlein

  16. 1950 Increasing mobility will disenfranchise a majority of the population. About 1990 a constitutional amendment will do away with state lines while retaining the semblance.

  1965 No further comment.

  1980 I goofed. I will be much surprised if either half of this double prediction comes to pass by 2000—at least in the form described and for the reasons I had in mind. The franchise now extends to any warm body over eighteen years of age and that franchise can be transferred to another state in less time than it takes the citizen to find housing in his/her new state.

  Thus no constitutional amendment is needed. But the state lines are fading year by year anyhow as power continues to move from the states to the Federal government and especially into the hands of non-elected bureaucrats.

  * * *

  17. 1950 All aircraft will be controlled by a giant radar net run on a continent-wide basis by a multiple electronic "brain."

  1965 No further comment.

  1980 This prediction still stands—although it may be my wishful thinking. Such a system was designed over thirty years ago; Congress wouldn't buy it. It would be more expensive today . . . and is far more urgently needed. Anyone who has ever been in the tower of a busy field or has ever ridden in the "office" of a commercial plane during a takeoff or landing at a busy field knows what I mean. All our fields are overloaded but anyone who goes in or out of San Diego or of O'Hare-Chicago or—but why go on? Our airplanes are pretty durn wonderful . . . but our method of handling air traffic at fields is comparable to Manhattan without traffic lights.

  I shall continue to fly regularly for two reasons: 1) Mrs. Heinlein and I hope to go out in a common disaster. 2) Consider the alternatives: AMTRAK (ugh!), buses (two ughs!), and driving oneself. The latter is fine for short distances (OPEC and Washington permitting) but, while in my younger days I drove across this continent so many times that I've lost count, today I am no longer physically up to such a trip even with a chauffeur.

  But that totally-automated traffic control system ought to be built. Expensive, yes—but what price do we place on a hundred dead passengers, a flight crew, and a modern airliner? In the present state of the art in computers and in radar neither the pilot nor the controller should be in the loop at landing or takeoff; they should simply be alert, ready to override, because even the most perfect machinery is subject to Murphy's Law. But all routine (99.9+%) takeoffs and landings should be made by computer.

  If this pushes small private planes onto separate and smaller fields, so be it. Bicycles do not belong on freeways. I hate to say that, as there is nothing more fun than a light sports plane.

  (Nothing that is not alive, I mean. Vive la difference!)

  (On air traffic control I speak with a modicum of authority. I returned to the aircraft industry for a short time in 1948 to research this subject, then wrote an article aimed at the slicks: "The Billion-Dollar Eye." I missed; it is still unpublished.)

  * * *

  18. 1950 Fish and yeast will become our principal sources of proteins. Beef will be a luxury; lamb and mutton will disappear.

  1965 I'll hedge number eighteen a little. Hunger is not now a problem in the USA and need not be in the year 2000—but hunger is a world problem and would at once become an acute problem for us if we were conquered . . . a distinct possibility by 2000. Between our present status and that of subjugation lies a whole spectrum of political and economic possible shapes to the future under which we would share the worldwide hunger to a greater or lesser extent. And the problem grows. We can expect to have to feed around half a billion Americans circa year 2000—our present huge surpluses would then represent acute shortages even if we never shipped a ton of wheat to India.

  1980 It would now appear that the USA population in 2000 A.D. will be about 270,000,000 instead of 500,000,000. I have been collecting clippings on demography for forty years; all that the projections have in common is that all of them are wrong. Even that figure of 270,000,000 may be too high; today the only reason our population continues to increase is that we oldsters are living longer; our current birthrate is not sufficient even to replace the parent generation.

  * * *

  19. 1950 Mankind will not destroy itself, nor will "Civilization" be destroyed.

  1965 I stand by prediction number nineteen.

  1980 I still stand by prediction number nineteen. There will be wars and we will be in some of them—and some may involve atomic weapons. But there will not be that all-destroying nuclear holocaust that forms the background of so many SF stories. There are three reasons for this: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the People's Republic of China.

  Why? Because the three strongest countries in the world (while mutually detesting each the other two) have nothing to gain and everything to lose in an all-out swapping of H-bombs. Because Kremlin bosses are not idiots and neither are those in Beijing (Peiping)(Peking).

  If another country—say Israel, India, or the South African Republic—gets desperate and tosses an A- or H-bomb, that country is likely to receive three phone calls simultaneously, one from each of the Big Three: "You have exactly three minutes to back down. Then we destroy you."

  After World War II I never expected that our safety would ever depend on a massive split in Communist International—but that is exactly what has happened.

  * * *

  1950 Here are things we won't get soon, if ever:

  Travel through time.

  Travel faster than the speed of light.

  "Radio" transmission of matter.

  Manlike robots with manlike reactions.

  Laboratory creation of life.

  Real understanding of what "thought" is and how it is related to matter.

  Scientific proof of personal survival after death.

  Nor a permanent end to war. (I don't like that prediction any better than you do.)

  * * *

  1950 Prediction of gadgets is a parlor trick anyone can learn; but only a fool would attempt to predict details of future history (except as fiction, so labeled); there are too many unknowns and no techniques for integrating them even if they were known.

  Even to make predictions about overall trends in technology is now most difficult. In fields where before World War II there was one man working in public, there are now ten, or a hundred, working in secret. There may be six men in the country who have a clear picture of what is going on in science today. There may not be even one.

  This is in itself a trend. Many leading scientists consider it a factor as disabling to us as the nonsense of Lysenkoism is to Russian technology. Nevertheless there are clear-cut trends which are certain to make this coming era enormously more productive and interesting than the frantic one we have just passed through. Among them are:

  Cybernetics: The study of communication and control of mechanisms and organisms. This includes the wonderful field of mechanical and electronic "brains"—but is not limited to it. (These "brains" are a factor in themselves that will speed up technical progress the way a war does.)

  Semantics: A field which seems concerned only with definitions of words. It is not; it is a frontal attack on epistemology—that is to say, how we know what we know, a subject formerly belonging to long-haired philosophers.

  New tools of mathematics and logic, such as calculus of statement, Boolean logic, morphological analysis, generalized symbology, newly invented mathematics of every sort—there is not space even to name these enormous fields, but they offer us hope in every field—medicine, social relations, biology, economics, anything.

  Biochemistry: Research into the nature of protoplasm, into enzyme chemistry, viruses, etc., give hope not only that we may conquer disease, but that we may someday understand the mechanisms of life itself. Through this, and with the aid of cybernetic machines and radioactive isotopes, we may eventually acquire a rigor of chemistry. Chemistry is not a discipline today; it is a jungle. We know that chemical behavior depends on the number of orbital electrons in an at
om and that physical and chemical properties follow the pattern called the Periodic Table. We don't know much else, save by cut-and-try, despite the great size and importance of the chemical industry. When chemistry becomes a discipline, mathematical chemists will design new materials, predict their properties, and tell engineers how to make them—without ever entering a laboratory. We've got a long way to go on that one!

  Nucleonics: We have yet to find out what makes the atom tick. Atomic power?—yes, we'll have it, in convenient packages—when we understand the nucleus. The field of radioisotopes alone is larger than was the entire known body of science in 1900. Before we are through with these problems, we may find out how the universe is shaped and why. Not to mention enormous unknown vistas best represented by ?????

  Some physicists are now using two time scales, the T-scale, and the tau-scale. Three billion years on one scale can equal an incredibly split second on the other scale—and yet both apply to you and your kitchen stove. Of such anarchy is our present state in physics.

  For such reasons we must insist that the Age of Science has not yet opened.

  * * *

  (Still 1950) The greatest crisis facing us is not Russia, not the Atom Bomb, not corruption in government, not encroaching hunger, not the morals of young. It is a crisis in the organization and accessibility of human knowledge. We own an enormous "encyclopedia"—which isn't even arranged alphabetically. Our "file cards" are spilled on the floor, nor were they ever in order. The answers we want may be buried somewhere in the heap, but it might take a lifetime to locate two already known facts, place them side by side and derive a third fact, the one we urgently need.

  Call it the Crisis of the Librarian.

  We need a new "specialist" who is not a specialist, but a synthesist. We need a new science to be the perfect secretary to all other sciences.

  But we are not likely to get either one in a hurry and we have a powerful lot of grief before us in the meantime.

  Fortunetellers can always be sure of repeat customers by predicting what the customer wants to hear . . . it matters not whether the prediction comes true. Contrariwise, the weatherman is often blamed for bad weather.

  Brace yourself.

  In 1900 the cloud on the horizon was no bigger than a man's hand—but what lay ahead was the Panic of 1907, World War I, the panic following it, the Depression, Fascism, World War II, the Atom Bomb, and Red Russia.

  Today the clouds obscure the sky, and the wind that overturns the world is sighing in the distance.

  The period immediately ahead will be the roughest, cruelest one in the long, hard history of mankind. It will probably include the worst World War of them all. It might even end with a war with Mars, God save the Mark! Even if we are spared that fantastic possibility, it is certain that there will be no security anywhere, save that which you dig out of your own inner spirit.

  * * *

  But what of that picture we drew of domestic luxury and tranquility for Mrs. Middleclass, style 2000 A.D.?

  She lived through it. She survived.

  Our prospects need not dismay you, not if you or your kin were at Bloody Nose Ridge, at Gettysburg—or trudged across the Plains. You and I are here because we carry the genes of uncountable ancestors who fought—and won—against death in all its forms. We're tough. We'll survive. Most of us.

  We've lasted through the preliminary bouts; the main event is coming up.

  But it's not for sissies.

  * * *

  The last thing to come fluttering out of Pandora's Box was Hope—without which men die.

  The gathering wind will not destroy everything, nor will the Age of Science change everything. Long after the first star ship leaves for parts unknown, there will still be outhouses in upstate New York, there will still be steers in Texas, and—no doubt—the English will still stop for tea.

  * * *

  Afterthoughts, fifteen years later—(1965)

  I see no reason to change any of the negative predictions which follow the numbered affirmative ones. They are all conceivably possible; they are all wildly unlikely by year 2000. Some of them are debatable if the terms are defined to suit the affirmative side—definitions of "life" and "manlike," for example. Let it stand that I am not talking about an amino acid in one case, or a machine that plays chess in the other.

  Today the forerunners of synthesists are already at work in many places. Their titles may be anything; their degrees may be in anything—or they may have no degrees. Today they are called "operations researchers," or sometimes "systems development engineers," or other interim tags. But they are all interdisciplinary people, generalists, not specialists—the new Renaissance Man. The very explosion of data which forced most scholars to specialize very narrowly created the necessity which evoked this new non-specialist. So far, this "unspecialty" is in its infancy; its methodology is inchoate, the results are sometimes trivial, and no one knows how to train to become such a man. But the results are often spectacularly brilliant, too—this new man may yet save all of us.

  * * *

  I'm an optimist. I have great confidence in Homo sapiens.

  We have rough times ahead—but when didn't we? Things have always been "tough all over." H-bombs, Communism, race riots, water shortage—all nasty problems. But not basic problems, merely current ones.

  We have three basic and continuing problems: The problem of population explosion; the problem of data explosion; and the problem of government.

  Population problems have a horrid way of solving themselves when they are not solved rationally; the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are always saddled up and ready to ride. The data explosion is now being solved, mostly by cybernetics and electronics men rather than by librarians—and if the solutions are less than perfect, at least they are better than what Grandpa had to work with. The problem of government has not been solved either by the "Western Democracies" or the "People's Democracies," as of now. (Anyone who thinks the people of the United States have solved the problem of government is using too short a time scale.) The peoples of the world are now engaged in a long, long struggle with no end in sight, testing whether one concept works better than another; in that conflict millions have already died and it is possible that hundreds of millions will die in it before year 2000. But not all.

  I hold both opinions and preferences as to the outcome. But my personal preference for a maximum of looseness is irrelevant; what we are experiencing is an evolutionary process in which personal preference matters, at most, only statistically. Biologists, ecologists in particular, are working around to the idea that natural selection and survival of the fittest is a notion that applies more to groups and how they are structured than it does to individuals. The present problem will solve itself in the cold terms of evolutionary survival, and in the course of it both sides will make changes in group structure. The system that survives might be called "Communism" or it might be called "Democracy" (the latter is my guess)—but one thing we can be certain of: it will not resemble very closely what either Marx or Jefferson had in mind. Or it might be called by some equally inappropriate neologism; political tags are rarely logical.

  For Man is rarely logical. But I have great confidence in Man, based on his past record. He is mean, ornery, cantankerous, illogical, emotional—and amazingly hard to kill. Religious leaders have faith in the spiritual redemption of Man; humanist leaders subscribe to a belief in the perfectibility of Man through his own efforts; but I am not discussing either of these two viewpoints. My confidence in our species lies in its past history and is founded quite as much on Man's so-called vices as on his so-called virtues. When the chips are down, quarrelsomeness and selfishness can be as useful to the survival of the human race as is altruism, and pig-headedness can be a trait superior to sweet reasonableness. If this were not true, these "vices" would have died out through the early deaths of their hosts, at least a half million years back.

  I have a deep and abiding confidence in Man as he is, imperfec
t and often unlovable—plus still greater confidence in his potential. No matter how tough things are, Man copes. He comes up with adequate answers from illogical reasons. But the answers work.

  Last to come out of Pandora's Box was a gleaming, beautiful thing—eternal Hope.

  (1980—I see no point in saying more. R.A.H.)

  If It's Sinful, It's More Fun

  THE ANSWERS

  N.B.: All trips are Earth parking orbit to Earth parking orbit without stopping at the target planet (Mars or Pluto). I assume that Hot Pilot Tom Corbett will handle his gravity-well maneuvers at Mars and at Pluto so as not to waste mass-energy—but that's his problem. Now about that assumption of "flat space" only slightly uphill: The Sun has a fantastically deep gravity well; its "surface" gravity is 28 times as great as ours and its escape speed is 55+ times as great—but at the distance of Earth's orbit that grasp has attenuated to about one thousandth of a gee, and at Pluto at 31.6 A.U. it has dropped off to a gnat's whisker, one millionth of gee.

  (No wonder it takes 2½ centuries to swing around the Sun. By the way, some astronomers seem positively gleeful that today Pluto is not the planet farthest from the Sun. The facts: Pluto spends nine-tenths of its time outside Neptune's orbit, and it averages being 875,000,000 miles farther out than Neptune—and at maximum is nearly 2 billion miles beyond Neptune's orbit (1.79 x 109 miles)—friends, that's more than the distance from here to Uranus, nearly four times as far as from here to Jupiter. When Pluto is out there—1865 or 2114 A.D.—it takes light 6 hours and 50 minutes to reach it. Pluto—the Winnuh and still Champeen! Sour grapes is just as common among astronomers as it is in school yards.)

  —and the rabbit is out of the hat. You will have noticed that the elapsed-time figures are exactly the same in both columns, but in days for Mars, weeks for Pluto—i.e., with constant-boost ships of any sort Pluto is only 7 times as far away for these conditions as is Mars even though in miles Pluto is about 50 times as far away.