{"id":63,"date":"2011-05-12T05:57:31","date_gmt":"2011-05-12T13:57:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/wordpress\/?p=63"},"modified":"2012-08-15T11:00:51","modified_gmt":"2012-08-15T19:00:51","slug":"blurring-the-line-between-fantasy-and-science-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/?p=63","title":{"rendered":"Blurring the Line Between Fantasy and Science Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Fantasy and Science Fiction are lumped together on the bookshelves, but they are clearly distinct. Science Fiction is usually a fanciful prediction of the future and fantasy is sheer escapism. Probably every science fiction author&#8217;s dream is to be an accurate prophet of future technology. How does our mental picture change when Lord of the Rings predicts future technology?<\/p>\n<p>What am I talking about? There have been a number of efforts in the recent news to use animals, either in robot or cyborg form, as spies:<\/p>\n<table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=1>\n<tr>\n<td><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/technology.timesonline.co.uk\/multimedia\/archive\/00170\/moth_1_170109a.jpg\"><\/td>\n<td><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/files\/11588\/fly_robot_x220.jpg\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><a href=\"http:\/\/technology.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/news\/tech_and_web\/article1831494.ece\">Cyborg Moths<\/a><\/td>\n<td><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kurzweilai.net\/news\/frame.html?main=\/news\/news_single.html?id%3D7043\">Robot flies<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td colspan=2>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"349\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/nnR8fDW3Ilo\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>As you may recall, the Fellowship of the Ring had to hide from a flock of birds that it feared to be spies of Saruman. In the very near future, you may either be comforted or terrified to know that &#8216;Big Brother&#8217; is watching over you through the eyes of the animal kingdom.<\/p>\n<div class=\"sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled\"><div class=\"robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-icon-text sd-sharing\"><h3 class=\"sd-title\">Share this:<\/h3><div class=\"sd-content\"><ul><li class=\"share-twitter\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" data-shared=\"sharing-twitter-63\" class=\"share-twitter sd-button share-icon\" href=\"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/?p=63&amp;share=twitter\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click to share on Twitter\" ><span>Twitter<\/span><\/a><\/li><li class=\"share-facebook\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" data-shared=\"sharing-facebook-63\" class=\"share-facebook sd-button share-icon\" href=\"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/?p=63&amp;share=facebook\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click to share on Facebook\" ><span>Facebook<\/span><\/a><\/li><li class=\"share-end\"><\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fantasy and Science Fiction are lumped together on the bookshelves, but they are clearly distinct. Science Fiction is usually a fanciful prediction of the future and fantasy is sheer escapism. Probably every science fiction author&#8217;s dream is to be an &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/?p=63\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled\"><div class=\"robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-icon-text sd-sharing\"><h3 class=\"sd-title\">Share this:<\/h3><div class=\"sd-content\"><ul><li class=\"share-twitter\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" data-shared=\"sharing-twitter-63\" class=\"share-twitter sd-button share-icon\" href=\"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/?p=63&amp;share=twitter\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click to share on Twitter\" ><span>Twitter<\/span><\/a><\/li><li class=\"share-facebook\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" data-shared=\"sharing-facebook-63\" class=\"share-facebook sd-button share-icon\" href=\"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/?p=63&amp;share=facebook\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click to share on Facebook\" ><span>Facebook<\/span><\/a><\/li><li class=\"share-end\"><\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[8,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-future","category-science-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgWoS-11","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":700,"href":"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions\/700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stevenrbrandt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}