Finally! You Realize I Was Write Quiz

Answer: the Moon

In 1865, 104 years before Apollo 11 took men to the moon, Jules Verne wrote his novel "From the Earth to the Moon". Verne described a launch into space from the state of Florida, with three astronauts, who experienced changes in gravity. He even fairly accurately made rough calculations required for a launch. Apollo 11 launched from Florida in July, 1969, shooting three men toward the moon, very like what Verne had described.

This story had great influence on future space travel scientists and authors.

Some believe Verne also predicted airships and submarines, though the technology did exist during his lifetime.

Answer: Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was a writer and clergyman, author of the novel "Gulliver's Travels" written possibly as early as 1713, but certainly by 1726. In it, astronomers discover two tiny moons orbiting Mars. The actual two moons of mars, Phobos and Deimos, were not discovered until 1877 by Asaph Hall, using the largest telescope in the world at that time. "Gulliver's Travels" was originally titled "Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World...".

The writer Voltaire presumably was influenced by Swift when he wrote a 1750 short story, "Micromegas", in which an alien visitor to Earth refers to two moons of Mars.

The Swift crater on the Mars moon Deimos is named after Jonathan.

Answer: Tom Clancy

Thriller master Tom Clancy (1947-2013) wrote "Debt of Honor" in 1994, in which he described an airplane crashing into the US capitol, similar to the September 11, 2001 aircraft attacks. Clancy is well known for description of fictional events that later come to pass.

Another is found in his 2010 novel, coauthored with Grant Blackwood, "Dead or Alive". A public enemy named Yasin is captured by a Navy SEAL team, but not in the mountain caves where everyone assumed him to be. He's found in an upscale house a short drive from a major city. Clancy got it right--Osama bin Laden was captured just that way in May, 2011.

Answer: H.G. Wells

Englishman Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) authored textbooks, political works, novels and science fiction. In 1914 he wrote about an "atomic bomb". Some think Wells inadvertently inspired the bomb, when physicist Leo Szilard read "The World set Free" in 1932.

He then co-patented the nuclear reactor, which enabled design of the bomb in 1942. Wells wrote "The Future of America" (1906) discussing "The Tragedy of Colour"--a future denial of much to black Americans. He penned a "ray gun" (the laser), a wireless intercom with voice mail (cell phone), moving conveyer belts (airport walkways), automatic sliding doors, and genetic engineering. Something he was wrong about: "The Time Machine". Oceania was the ruling party in George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty Four".

Answer: Debit cards

"Looking Backward, 2000-1887" was written in 1887 by American Edward Bellamy (born 1850). It was about an American utopian society in the year 2000, where people were allotted credit on a card, which they used to buy goods. Initially there was an equal allotment to everyone, but special citizens soon gained additional credit.

This work sold over 200,000 copies and sparked a national political movement. Bellamy also wrote fictional descriptions of what we now call shopping malls. The first shopping mall in the US didn't exist until 1922, long after Bellamy died of tuberculosis in 1898, at just 48 years old.

Answer: Home printer

Edward Page Mitchell (1852-1927) wrote "The Senator's Daughter" in 1879. It described a home printer. The high-speed printer was designed in 1953 but was not available in homes until 1988, more than 100 years after Mitchell wrote of it: "...an endless strip of printed paper, about three feet wide, was slowly issuing from between noiseless rollers and falling in neat folds into a willow basket placed on the floor to receive it. Mr. Wanlee bent his head over the broad strip of paper and began to read attentively."

Mitchell was instrumental in developing the science fiction genre. He wrote about an invisible guy ("The Crystal Man") years ahead of H.G. Wells. He described a time travel machine, speed of light travel, a cyborg, and teleportation. Accounting machines could print tabs in the 1920s, so that wasn't the answer.

Answer: E.M. Forster

Perhaps best known for "A Passage to India" and "Howards End", Edward Morgan Forster (1879-1970) penned 6 novels, as well as many essays, short stories and musical text. His 1909 "The Machine Stops" expressed his concerns about overdependence on technology. In this short story humans live underground, attached to a machine very like the Internet. They use what became known more than 90 years later as instant messaging, and video chat. For example:

"...the round plate that she held in her hands began to glow. A faint blue light shot across it, darkening to purple, and presently she could see the image of her son, who lived on the other side of the earth, and he could see her."

Answer: Roger Ebert

Best known as a film critic, Roger Ebert (1942-2013) published more than 20 non-fiction books, and one novel. He was also a journalist, screenwriter, and a wildly popular film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times for over 40 years. He won the first Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.

In a 1987 interview Ebert said of the future, "We will have high-definition wide-screen TV sets, and a push-button dialing system to order the movie you want at the time you want it". Home consumers could access on-demand Internet "streaming" media around 1996, after the first large-scale, live, online concert broadcast. Netflix on-demand media provider was founded in 1997. YouTube.com video site opened in 2005.

Answer: No

Morgan Robertson wrote "Futility" (later renamed "The Wreck of the Titan") in 1898, fourteen years before the RMS Titanic tragedy of 1912. In his story, the Titan was "800 feet, displacing 75,000 tons" (the Titanic was 882 feet, displacing 53,000 long tons).

The Titan AND the Titanic both carried too few lifeboats, they were moving too fast and struck an iceberg on their starboard sides, at night, in the North Atlantic. Both were 400 nautical miles from Newfoundland. Robertson described his Titan as "unsinkable". Sadly, and weirdly, he was right. William T. Stead, an Englishman who died on the Titanic, had also published an 1892 story about a ship that collided with an iceberg.

Answer: Nostradamus

Frenchman Michel de Nostredame, Latinised to Nostradamus, lived in 1503-1566. His most famous book was "Les Propheties" (The Prophecies) written in 1555, which has over 200 editions. He wrote well over six thousand prophecies, while another sixty were lost.

His first wife and children died of the plague, an epidemic that greatly influenced the course of his life and work. He remarried and had six children. Catherine de Medici, wife of King Henry II, was a great admirer. Though many considered him a "prophet" who predicted many future events with accuracy, others saw him as a convoluted, misinterpreted historian.

He rejected the label "prophet". Yet, centuries later, many believe he was right.