Check your subscription status, update your details and more. Which science fiction novels have been best at predicting the future? We’ve loved sci-fi at New Scientist for the past 70 years, but which novels got the future right?
From Neuromancer to The Handmaid’s Tale, Emily H. Wilson picks the most prescient reads of the past seven decades _New Scientist_ has always been interested in science fiction and its attempts to imagine the future. In 1958, when the magazine was 2 years old, it published an article by Ian S.
Menzies in which he wrote: “Like every other form of literature, s. f. ranges from excellent to awful. But the best of science fiction today is far superior to much other fiction.” Elsewhere in the feature, Menzies talked about the risks of the “rapid catching up of reality with fiction”. It’s true that some of the sci-fi he was reading then was rapidly overtaken by events and, in the process of that, rendered redundant.
What Menzies couldn’t know was that other works from that same period would still be regarded as prescient, important or relevant, or even all three, decades later. Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox. We'll also keep you up to date with _New Scientist_ events and special offers. #### Comment ### Killer Bigfoot evidence rejected by Bigfoot’s biggest fans Regulars #### Comment ### Blade Runner 2099 is coming.
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