Why Sci-Fi is an Unreliable Guide to the Future

Pity sci-fi writers: they’ve got to come up with yet another Cowboys In Space movie or TV series. This means that all the things we take for granted in our daily lives have to be transferred into whizzy spaceships crossing vast distances without incurring any of the real-world problems that would render the script unworkable.

So script writers create deus ex machina solutions: wormholes, faster-than-light travel, subspace communications, perhaps even a species of docile super-unicorns that can violate all the laws of physics in order to ensure the…