The Mind Parasites Q6 - Reading a book whose era has gone past

RichardAbbott

The Mind Parasites is set ahead of the time of its writing, but before our own time - this is also true of 1984, Bladerunner, Back to the Future, and a whole host of other books. Do you feel Wilson was more or less successful than other authors in predicting a future 40 or 50 years ahead of his own time?

Apocryphal

Oh, definitely less. With authors like Asimov and Clarke and Robinson, one feels like their works have shaped the future.

NeilNjae

I think the physical and engineering parts were plausible extrapolations from the author's time. No problems there. Now, the social setting was a very different matter. He described a world where white male technocrats had all the power, and were considered better people than everyone else. That lack of diversity was quite striking to me.

RichardAbbott

@NeilNjae said:
I think the physical and engineering parts were plausible extrapolations from the author's time. No problems there. Now, the social setting was a very different matter. He described a world where white male technocrats had all the power, and were considered better people than everyone else. That lack of diversity was quite striking to me.

Agreed. Things like the ready availability of rocket transport from place to place, and the intrusiveness of the media, all make good sense. But even in the early 60s it should surely have been possible to predict the rise in importance of other nations and parts of the world outside Europe and the US?

clash_bowley

Actually this was more successful in certain respects than the rest of the book.