An analysis of the scientific
predictions
in Ernest Mansfield’s first novel
Astria - the Ice Maiden
Ernest Mansfield made
several interesting scientific predictions in his 1910 novel Astria - the Ice Maiden, however his name has
not been found in any analysis of past SF works1-4. This may reflect
that he never achieved fame as an author with just two published books, or that
at the time his first book was not recognised as a work of Science Fiction(Si-Fi). Now an attempt has
been made to analyse the significant of his predictions and a summary is
presented here.
During the period from 1850
to 1930 literary works with a science fiction content were known as scientific
romances, with the most famous and prolific authors in that period being
Jules Verne5 and H. G. Wells6. These authors are
sometimes referred to as “the fathers of science fiction". Many scientific
romances during this period have also grouped under the heading of Utopia
gendre, being largely based on fictitious,
futuristic and idealised worlds. Astria -
the Ice Maiden is clearly in this style.
However, the period well after Mansfield’s death from the 1940s to the
1950's is now considered to be the “golden age of science fiction”3.
Today’s SF literature1,3 that analyses earlier Si-Fi predictions identifies two factors that could be relevant to an assessment of Ernest’s book: Firstly, it is said that some early predictions are written in such a cryptic language that it makes them so vague and imprecise that a broad spread optimistic and sensational interpretations can be placed on them. However, Ernest’s predictions and descriptions do not appear to fall into this category. Secondly, it is much quoted in recent Si-Fi literature that as the many writers in the past have made thousands of predictions, then statistically at least a few will have turned out to be have been accurate. This hypothesis however, is also not relevant to the assessment of a handful of predictions made by one author.
Mansfield’s predictions are quite diverse and the merit of them has to assessed by considering each individually with an assessment of earlier Si-Fi literature, the state of research and technology both in 1910 and at the present time. Only then can accepted Si-Fi classifications can be assigned to each, namely:
earlier research/technology identified, earlier similar predictions, successful prediction, unfulfilled prediction.
There are ten notable predictions in the book worthy of investigation…
( the book can be studied
on a separate webpage/tab at... ASTRIA
- The Ice Maiden )
prediction:
|
A life
expectancy of 1400 years
|
page 45
|
|
quote: (from the book) |
“our physicians thought
the course of countless centuries improved things so greatly that the average
age is now 1400 years…“it is our custom to live 50 years and then repose for 50
years”. |
||
investigation: |
Today’s
most optimistic prophecies refer to only a couple of hundred years. |
||
conclusion: |
An
unfulfilled prediction that likely to remain that
way |
||
prediction:
|
People and materials travelling by telegraphy
|
page 57
|
|
quote: |
“By what method do they travel? …telegraph…the
final development of this method in your world will be the transportation of material…you
have everything to hand to bring this about, but you have not developed the
method to utilise it”. |
||
investigation: |
An earlier similar prediction has been identified
in “The Man Without a Body”, by Edward Page Mitchell, published in 1877 6. |
||
conclusion: |
earlier
similar prediction |
||
prediction:
|
Radium as a
major source of fuel
|
page 58
|
|
quote: |
“The centre of the earth is a mass of molten
radium like the sun itself…we use it throughout our realm as a fuel. It is
the illuminant of our streets, parks and palaces” |
||
investigation: |
The radioactive properties of radium were
discovered just before the book was written but then it was only known then
that minute amounts of energy are released naturally. Radium and uranium are
similar heavy radioactive elements and were originally were discovered and
identified as one element called “pitchblende” in 1896 before Madam Curie
separated them in 1898. Ernest Rutherford first split the atom in 1917 to
discover the large amounts of energy potentially available and the first
fission nuclear reactor was built in 1934.
No similar earlier predictions has been
identified. |
||
conclusion: |
Although the centre of the earth is clearly not
all radium it would otherwise seem to be a successful prediction. |
||
prediction:
|
Ice
used as a major source of fuel
|
page 61
|
|
quote: |
“Fire
in the land of Ice?…Everything in your world has come from fire and ice…in the
course of time the ice enveloped the globe of fire and formed a shell to
confine the molten mass…Water is a fuel” |
||
investigation: |
Today tritium is extracted from water and ice and
is the fuel used in nuclear fusion research reactors. The existence of
tritium was first identified in the 1920s, and then produced by Ernest
Rutherford in 1934. Fusion reactors have been under development around the
world since the 1960s, but are still not in commercial use, but they almost
certainly will be in the future, producing huge amounts of electricity with
very little pollution. The machines used to produce large quantities of
tritium from water are known as Ice Condensers. No similar earlier
predictions have been identified. |
||
conclusion: |
This would
appear to be a successful
prediction |
||
prediction:
|
Global
Warming
|
page 66
|
|
quote: |
“Every glazier in the world today is a decaying
force! …Were it not for ice, your air would became clogged…
Ice is king of nature and the guardian of the world”…What is that feeble
falling of snow down the valley - or for that matter the combined avalanches
of the earth - compared with the great displacement that takes place every
day in our realm!” |
||
investigation: |
Although very little appears to have been written about global warming before 1910, one well established piece of research has been found… Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927) was
a Swedish scientist that was the first to claim in 1896 that fossil fuel
combustion may eventually result in enhanced global warming. He proposed a
relation between atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and temperature.
He found that the average surface temperature of the earth is about 15oC
because of the infrared absorption capacity of water vapor
and carbon dioxide. This is called the natural greenhouse effect. Arrhenius
suggested a doubling of the CO2 concentration would lead to a 5oC
temperature rise 9. |
||
conclusion: |
Earlier research identified |
||
prediction:
|
A
proposed solution to global warming
|
page 68
|
|
quote: |
“Last year we sent 200,000 square miles of big ice
to the South Pole…for centuries we have been sending this ice south…Why do we
do this? - to save your world from destruction!” |
||
investigation: |
From Yahoo Answers... Can ice reduce global
warming? “Clearly if there was enough of it, covering enough of the earth, it
would reflect enough sunlight away that the world would not warm, but that's
not the case at the moment. In today's environment, with all the ice in
Greenland, the arctic ocean, Antarctica, high mountain glaciers, etc, the
world is still warming, so it would seem not. If you were thinking about
making ice, that would be far worse, when you do that, the process generates
more heat than can be offset by the ice you make”. There are other similar
assessments. |
||
conclusion: |
Unfulfilled prediction and a very unlikely future
solution. |
||
prediction:
|
Cars
travelling at 1000mph using rays
|
page 90
|
|
quote: |
“All our cars are good. The average speed is
1000mph…and it is the ice rays alone that form the motive power” |
||
investigation: |
Several earlier related predictions and
existing technology have been identified… From The Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne in 1867 5 : “All the stars exceed it in rapidity, and the earth herself is at this moment carrying us round the sun at three times as rapid a rate, and yet she is a mere lounger on the way compared with many others of the planets! And her velocity is constantly decreasing. Is it not evident, then, I ask you, that there will some day appear velocities far greater than these, of which light or electricity will probably be the mechanical agent?” The first electric car was built in 1884 by British inventor Thomas Parker in 1884. A letter from Mr. Edison in the New York Times of
12 Aug 1902: "I believe that within thirty years nearly all railways
will discard steam locomotives and adopt electric motors,
and that the electric automobile will displace the horse almost entirely”. |
||
conclusion: |
Similar
earlier predictions and existing technology existed |
||
prediction:
|
Radium combined
with ice for huge energy generation
|
page 92
|
|
quote: |
“If their combined power could be utilised the new
force would be stupendous...your deadliest explosives are amalgamation of
innocent materials, which separately are destitute of fiery or combustive
nature”. |
||
investigation: |
Radium and uranium are similar heavy radioactive
elements and were originally were discovered and identified in 1896 as one
element named “pitchblende” before Madam Curie separated them in 1898.
Conversely, Deuterium, has similarities to tritium, both are produced
from water and ice and are two of the lightest elements. A hydrogen bomb is
the product of merging these heavy and light elements in one instantaneous
nuclear event releasing huge amounts of energy in an explosion. The first
hydrogen bomb was exploded in 1952. No similar earlier prediction has been
identified. |
||
conclusion: |
A very successful prediction |
||
prediction:
|
Messages Conveyed
from one mind to another with a “receiver”
|
page 103
|
|
quote: |
“… I could see she had made communication…but you
have no instrument, at least none that I could see…we do not need instruments
to convey messages from one mind to another…the secret was in the receiver”. |
||
investigation: |
The term “telepathy” was introduced by Fredric W.
H. Myers in 1882, who was founder of the Society for Psychical Research and
it replace the earlier expression “thought-transference”. It has been a
common theme in science fiction ever since. The concept must therefore be
classed as having earlier similar predictions although no reference to
a “receiver” or enabling machine has been found other than a recent quote….
“Some believe that technologically enabled telepathy will be inevitable.
Professor Warwick10 of the University of Reading, England is one
of the leading proponents of this view and has based all of his recent
cybernetics research around developing practical, safe technology for
directly connecting human nervous systems together with computers and with
each other. He believes techno-enabled telepathy will in the future become
the primary form of human communication”. The internet will inevitably play a
key role in this. |
||
conclusion: |
A “receiver” as a telepathy enabler is a viable unfulfilled
prediction, but getting very close11! |
||
prediction:
|
Dialled
variable light level at any time
|
page 118
|
|
quote: |
“the dial could be so
manipulated so that the darkness could be obtained at any time desired…darkness
would come about so gradually that the difference between each shade would
scarcely be discerned”. |
||
investigation: |
Electric lighting was in general use by 1910, but
varying the intensity with a dial was not been available at that time, nor
would there have been a mechanism to link the switching to a clock, or make
gradual transitions. The development
of electronics from the 1940s onwards made this feature a reality. No similar
earlier predictions have been identified. |
||
conclusion: |
A
successful prediction |
||
4 appear to have been successful
predictions
3 could have been based on earlier similar predictions or existing technologies at the time
3 remain unfulfilled - with one becoming increasingly viable and
two extremely unlikely to be fulfilled
none of the ten were too ambiguous
or vague to make an reasonable
assessment
This represents around a 50% success rate, which for the nature of these predictions is impressive and is probably on a par with many of the well know Sci-Fi authors from the past.
1 Trillion
year spree: the history of science fiction
Brian W Aldiss, David Wingrove
1986
2 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fiction_authors
3 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_fiction
4 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_science_fiction_authors
5
www.trivia-library.com/b/science-fiction-predictions-jules-verne.htm
6 www.trivia-library.com/b/science-fiction-predictions-h-g-wells.htm
7 http://www.technovelgy.com Timeline of Science Fiction Ideas and
Inventions
8 http://www.dimension1111.com/nostradamus-prophecies.html
9
www.lenntech.com/greenhouse-effect/global-warming-history.htm
10
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Warwick
11
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyborg
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