Sci Fi

I have found the most remarkable collection of SF short stories. It is called "The Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories". It has stories from 1903 to 1990.

Just the first three stories:
"The Land Ironclads" (H.G. Wells, 1903) - a surprisingly prescient description of tanks used in trench warfare. Of course, in researching this post, I checked Wikipedia, and it cites this story... They fail to mention that Wells was somewhat off on the scale:

"It might have been from eighty to a hundred feet long"

He also describes them as using automatic weapons (which had been deployed in 1889 according to Wikipedia).

They also had an interesting fire control and "fly by wire" (or fire by wire) system:

"sights which threw a bright little camera-obscura picture... marked with two crossed lines... A little twisted strand of wire like an electric-light wire ran from this implement up to the gun... when the land ironclad moved forward the sights got a compensatory deflection in the direction of its motion"

That last bit is what's is called a fire control system and wasn't deployed until WWII (on ships as analog computers, and in planes as the Norden bombsight). I don't think it was until modern times (say, Abrams) that tanks got them.

"Finis" (Frank Pollack, 1906) - An interesting story that reminded me of a story where the sun releases a huge flare that cooks the planet. In this version, scientists calculate that there is a giant sun at the center of the universe, whose light is just about to reach Earth (after "a thousand years"?). This is interesting because the idea of a limited universe didn't become popular until Hubble's investigation of 1919-1929.

"As Easy as ABC" (Rudyard Kipling, 1912 - expansion of a story from 1909) - Most people know of Kipling for his poems, and "Jungle Book". I also remember him for Gunga Din. I never knew he wrote SF! And some remarkable stuff:

"An ABC [Aeriel Board of Control] boat does not take the air with the level-keeled lift of a liner, but shoots up rocket-fashion like the 'aeroplane' of our ancestors" (the story is set in 2065).

The ships appear to be some sort of blimp (there is reference to floating and mooring). They also travel a shocking "320 m. p. h.", and cross the Atlantic in 10 hours - not bad considering the Wright brothers had just gotten started in 1900.

There is also a very weird society - world population is down to 600e6 (in 1900, the world population was around 1.5e9). People no longer gather in crowds, and there is no voting for things (sort of a hyper-individualism).

The story involves a group of "voting evangelists" who trigger a riot. The ABC is forced to suppress the rioters with sensory overload (intense light and sound). There is also an interesting sort of force field ("ground-circuits") which can slow or stop movement.