Help me compile a list of prescient movies/books:

1984 = Bush II War era. i.e. Patriot Act\

China Syndrome = Fukushima Reactor Disaster

:rofl:

for that very reason.

:evilgrin:

:toast:

Although it was a few decades premature

H. G. Wells' 1933 book and 1936 movie pretty much predicted WWII

I don't think either of these films would get made in the post-9/11 world.

Just put The Long Kiss Goodnight in my que - if it's anything like EOS I'll like it.

came out scant months before the event at Three Mile Island. The timing gave lots of us the jitters.


-

We have so many different kinds of soma it makes my head spin just thinking about it.

:toast:

and more recently, The International, about the deathgrip bankers have on the world.

a serious rec: Infinite Jest, DFW

State of Siege - good prediction of US reaction to terrorism.

Also: blowback.

Farenheit 451, 1966: reality tv.

Star trek 1969 cellphones, iphones

Brazil was so surreal in 1984.

Otherwise known as the torture bureau.

"Otherwise you'll jeopardize your credit rating!"

I stand by that assessment. GREAT film.

in novels and short stories and the various movie adaptations (Blade Runner, Minority Report, etc.)

but then I watched it again after September 11th and it was eerily prescient about the whole "preemptive strike" doctrine.

Almost wonder if Rupert Murdoch modeled Faux News after the satire that of "news coverage" that was put in that film.

and in a far more subtle way, Howard's End.

will change things.

= those folks I see at every freeway on-ramp with cardboard signs.

brave new world
1984
rollerball
network
play it as it lays
they live
the matrix (1)
z
manchurian candidate


not all exactly "prescient" -- but for me, each opened my thinking to some aspect of ongoing reality i hadn't consciously registered

Watch all those and hide under the bed...

Just my personal choice.

Sam

http://www.docmyday.com/new/the-age-of-miracles-the-earthquake-novel-that-has-shaken-the-publishing-world-guardian

There was a big auction for publishing rights for it recently.

I watched it after Jon Stewart interviewed him and they mentioned it as being prescient. They weren't kidding!

Otherwise known as "The Jersey Shore".

that were very eerily warning of the attack on her later. At least she's making a good comeback now even today as we speak.

It's been a long time coming...

of the working class+poor.

The Jungle=Plutocrats robber baron-vs worker adulterated food ,bleak,anti immigrant etc.

written in 1910's. This book helped expose the inhuman working,living conditions in the Chgo. stockyards.

It was the public outcry over this book that helped bring about the Pure Food and Drug act etc..that RW's

are now chipping away..

"The Day the Earth Stood Still" -- Patricia Neal -- Michael Rennie

"Executive Action" -- Burt Lancaster -- Robert Ryan --

"JFK" by Oliver Stone

"Loose Change" --

"Summer Clues" --

"Chinatown" -- Jack Nicholson

Lots of books --

"The Feminist Majority" - Betty Friedan

"The Beast Reawakens" -- Martin Lee or vice versa

"The Rise of the Fourth Reich" -- Jim Marrs

"Crossfire" - Jim Marrs

"High Treason I" and "High Treason II" by Edward Harrison Livingstone

A few others all go about stealing from the treasury.

Actually the episode ended with Obama being a good guy, but if you just watch the first twenty five minutes it ofers a good description of how the political class is really about doing in the rest of us.

I can't believe it wasn't mentioned yet.

Overpopulation, globalization and corporations running the governmentof countries, etc.

nt

the film is a wonderful reflection of Bush era interrogation, pay particular attention to the details in the background, a lot of information is revealed.

50 years old and we're still having the same freeking argument.

specifically the character Milo Minderbinder and his prescient version of predatory Capitalism/Globalization/Outsourcing.

"And everybody has a share,"
shouted Milo as the American planes began dropping bombs on their own base.

real as Grapes of Wrath and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

I went to (two 66-70, 8-11th grade) prep schools in the SF area in the late 1960s. One of our field trips was to see the first stage production of Cuckoo's Nest at a small theatre in San Francisco in 68 or 69. I bought tickets and went again the next time my parents came for a weekend visit. In 1968 from the same boarding school we went to ACT to see Hair. I still have the playbill. I was a Fillmore West and Winterland teen with parents over 400 miles away. Read Grapes and Cuckoo's Nest and loved them in my mid teens and now have already or perhaps may live the visions in the narratives.

Steinbeck was an obsession once in my life until most read and retain highest regards.

I noted Philip K Dick in this thread and would add Vonnegut as seers to the future but less obvious and fragmented an humane in their art than some more popular authors and thinkers. My fav Vonnegut is God Bless You Mr. Rosewater followed by Cat's Cradle.

Read most of Huxley as a teen 66-72. I am almost embarrased to say that my library contains as many as 9 different editions of several PKD novels and I possess the vast majority of the writings of PKD and biographers or scholars. Some PKD is crap. Some Isn't. The movies leave out the depth of the writings. How can one do Can Androids Dream of Electric Sheep as a movie called Blade Runner and leave out Mercerism?

What is weird, is that I knew and worked with PKD's mother in the USDA Research Station in Berkeley, CA but made no connection because we were acquaintances (she was clerical and was a research assistant). I did not know about PKD's life until the Sutin bio. She never mentioned her son when I worked at the then location of the PSW for parts of 6 years while at Cal. My first PKD read was The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch in high school.

By William Gibson

Excerpts from reader reviews on Amazon:

"Gibson famously coined the word "cyberspace" and he imagines a world where continents are ruled more by corporations and crime syndicates than nations, where cultural trends both ancient and modern dwell side by side, where high-tech and biotech miracles are as ordinary as air."

"My constant back thought as I read was the absolute awe that I felt for Gibson's ability to envision a computer world so 1990's true to life at a time when Apple had yet to create their first Mac! Gibson's description of "jacking in" to the net, and "flipping" is so close to today's "logging on" and "quick-switching" that it gave me goosebumps each time he used the terms!"

Here...we have the dirty, hedonistic, consumerist, urban society we have today, driven by brandnames, bright lights, and no future; in essence, the Gen X-er's future.....It's not quite like Blade Runner, where it's a more Film Noir type city. Here we have technology used, not to benefit mankind but to sell to consumers - people who live out their lives as the pawns of corporations....There is of course the wonderful descriptions of Virtual Reality/Internet, where mankind has created a sort of spirit-world, where depressed outcasts of this society can escape from the "world of meat".

"The issues Gibson presents are quite important today, such as urban sprawl, the decline of the American economic empire, and the culture of hackers and the Internet. Some issues we will soon face more and more, like the rise of the bio-tech corporations, the interface of man and machine, and the full consequences of environmental damage."

"Neuromancer represents the best version of a possible future of weak government and powerful mega-corporations."


http://www.amazon.com/Neuromancer-William-Gibson/dp/0441012035/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1305778912&sr=8-1