FICTION BECOMES FACT

Hokitika Guardian, 14 September 1929, Page 8

FICTION BECOMES FACT

PREDICTIONS FULFILLED. Fiction provides many illustrations of prophecies that have been fulfilled in the course of time (says the Melbourne Age). A novelist who finds his material in exploring some of the possible developments of science, as Mr H. G. Wells did in his earlier books, such as “The Time-Machine,” “ The Food of the Gods,” “ The Invisible .Man,” and numerous short stories dealing with mysteries of time and space, can be certain that in the course of time, though perhaps not during his own lifetime, some of the things he described will come to pass. When Jules Yern > wrote his stirring stories, such as “ Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” “ The English at the North Pole,” and “From the'Earth to the Moon,” he indulged in prophecies, some of which have since been fulfilled, and some of which still await fulfillment in the distant future. Since lie wrote his account of a successful trip to the North Pole both the North Pole and the South Pole have been reached by explorers, but when he wrote that story 60 years ago more than a score of unsuccessful efforts had been made to get to the North Pole. “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” which describes a varied and exciting voyage in a submersible ship, was published in 1870, but it was not until 31 years later that the first submarine was built for the British Navy', although several experiments had been made previously in other countries in the construction of submersible craft. Great improvements have been made in the construction of submarines since they were first adopted as fighting craft by the navies of the world, and their radius of action has been extended considerably ; but no nation has yet built a.submarine to compare with that described by Jules Verne. Life in a submarine is cramped and uncomfortable but the time may yet come when a submarine voyage, will be a pleasure cruise, and when those on board will be able to take walks along the sea bed, as did the voyagers Jules Verne described.

Most of the scientific possibilities described by Mr Wells are still remote, but in one of his short stoi’ies, “ The Land Ironclads,” published in 1903, he described war conditions that were then regarded as fantastic, but were destined to be fulfilled in the Great War of 1914-18. Not only did he describe trench warfare and the conditions of stalemate that it produces, but he also introduced “tanks,” which were the most novel and successful features of the closing stages of the great war, when the tide of victory, turned in favour of the Allies. The inappropriate name of tanks, given to these strange engines of warfare, was intended to mislead the German military authorities in case any information about them was obtained by the German Secret Service while they were being built. Mr Wells called his tanks land ironclads, and in his story they are much larger and more imposing than the actual tanks that were built by the Allies, but Mr Wells’s land ironclads had many features in common with the real destructive tanks of 1918.

In his story Mr Wells describes the enemy’s land ironclad through a war correspondent’s first impressions. “He looked again at the land ironclad. As lie saw it in the bleak, grey dawn, lying obliquely upon the slope, and on the very lip of the foremost trench, the suggestion of a stranded vessel was very strong indeed. It might have been from 80 to 100 feet long—it was about 250 yards away—its vertical side was 10 feet high or so, smooth for that height, and then with a complex pat-, terning under the eaves of its flattish turtle cover. This patterning was a close interlacing of port-holes, riflebarrels and telescope tubes —sham and real—indistinguishable one from the other. The thing had come into such a position as to enfilade the trench, which was empty now, as far as he could see, except for two or three crouching knots of men and the tumbled dead. Behind it across the plain it had scored the grass with a train of linked impressions—like the dotted tracing sea things leave in the sand.

. • . The monster had moved. It continued to move regardless of the hail that splashed its skin with bright new specks of lead. It was singing a mechanical little ditty to itself, ‘ Tuftuf, tuf-tuf, and squirting out little jets of steam behind. It had humped itself up, as a limpet does before it crawls;' it had lifted its skirt and displayed along the length of it—feet. They were thick, stumpy feet, between knobs and buttons in Shape—flat, broad things, reminding one of the feet of elephants or the legs of caterpillars ; and then as the skirt rose higher, the war correspondent, scrutinising the thing through his glasses again, saw that these feet hung, as it were, on the rims of wheels.” An interesting description of broadcasting music, more than 30 years before wireless broadcasting was invented. is to be found in the late Edward Bellamy’s book, “Looking Backward.” 'This book, when it was first published in 1888, bad an enormous vogue, and was translated into French, German, Dutch and Italian. The author, who died in 1898, was an American journalist. The central figure of the storv is a young man named West, who wakes up in the year 2000 and finds that the world since he knew it in 1887 lias become a Socialist Utopia. The following is the description of West’s introduction to broadcast music:—

“ Come into the music room/’ she said, and I followed lier into an apartment. . » l with a floor of polish-

ed wood. I was prepared for new devices m musical instruments, but I saw nothing in the room which by any stretch of the imagination could be conceived as such “ Please look at to-day’s music, (| she said, handing me a card, “and tell me what you would prefer! it is now 5 o’clock, you will remember. The card bore the date September 12th, tfJOO, and contained the longest programme of music I have ever seen. . . . 1 observed that this prodigious programme was an all-day one divided into, sections, corresponding to the hours. . . There were but a lew pieces of music in the 5 p.rn. section, and I indicated an organ piece as my preference. “ She made me sit down comfortably, and as far as 1 could see merely touched one or two screws, and at once the room was filled with the music of a grand' organ anthem. billed, not Hooded, for by some means ' the volume of melody had been carefully graduated to the size of the apartment.”

• But modern science has improved on Bellamy’s prediction, for the broadcasting he describes was by telephonic communication, not by wireless.

Who could have believed 20 years ago that the autocratic rule of the Czars of Russia was nearing its end? Although Nihilism, the name formerly given to the tenets of the Russian Socialist revolutionaries, dates back to 1860, its .activities had caused scarcely a ripple on the lives of Russia’s 150,000,000 people. Before , the Great War'a successful revolution in Russia was regarded as an utter impossibility. But in 1905 a Russian Jew, Al. Grottey, writing under.the name of Carl Joubert, published a book “The Fate of Czardom,” in which the overthrow of the whole system of government in Russia was predicted in the following passage:— “ We must prepare ourselves for dire catastrophes and sickening crimes; we must remember that only a fraction ol the horrors of that unhappy country reach our ears—of the rest we can have no conception. Robbery, arson, and murder, and crimes of nameless dread are daily and nightly - committed throughout the length and breadth of the land. Anarchy reigns supremo. Soon the whole country will be drenched in blood. . . . How long can

such things continue? .... A time will come when the revolutionary party will cry,‘Half.’ Then the real struggle will begin—the conflict between the forces of order and anarchy. More blood will be shed; but it will be in the cause of liberay and justice. : . . . Et&ntually it will establish a government' from the people, by the people, and for the pepple. Therefore, it matters not whether Czardom makes peace with Japan or not. . . There can be no peace in Russia until the people of Russia rule ; and before that is accomplished there must be liberty of conscience'and liberty of speech, a representative' Government, the dissolution of tlie church and State, the abolition of ! the ! Holy Synod, the abolition of the* censor’s office; free and compulsory education for ail the people regardless of race or creed, equal rights for all before the law, and the elimination from the language of the word ‘ ‘ Czar.’ This is a list of measures which might well appal the strongest Government. It means, the complete reorganisation of the present condition of the lives of 150,000,(P n people. The gigantic nature of the task has caused many people to assert that a revolution in Russia is an impossibility. Well, we shall see.”