I just finished “The Lathe of Heaven” by Ursula Leguin, and it was absolutely uncanny how it described the world today. What books have you read from more than 25 years ago that, when read today, seem to describe our world with unusual precision?
“The Lathe” was written in 1971 and nominally set in 1989. In the initial scene, she describes climate change:
The Greenhouse Effect had been quite gradual, and Haber, born in 1962, could clearly remember the blue skies of his childhood. Nowadays the eternal snows were gone from all the world’s mountains, even Everest, even Erebus, fiery-throated on the waste Antarctic shore.
And then she proceeds to discuss various permutations of war among Israel, the Middle East, China, and Afghanistan. I know these were all hotspots before, but I felt as though I was reading a novel with a contemporary setting!
Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge
The Communist Manifesto. Edit: OK not really a book, a pamphlet, but whatever
- Published in 1949. So much of it, especially the sacrifice of privacy to Big Brother sounds very 2023 and beyond.
My partner read The Plague by Albert Camus about 1 year into the pandemic… she couldnt get over how accurate it felt
Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton! I read it while doing a sociology masters and it was interesting to see the ways perceptions of class and social structures permeates the ways we constrict each other now play out over 100 years ago too. I also think turn of the century novels are also fascinating to see how authors in 1920s looked back on their recent past, the same way we look back on the early naughties now.
The first story in The King in Yellow comes pretty close to modern times despite being a bit over a century old. It tries to predict some stuff and lands pretty close.
I haven’t read the Lathe of Heaven since I was in middle school in the early 90s. I’ll have to give it a re-read
In Praise of Folly, by Erasmus of Rotterdam
He just seems like a modern human sent back in a Time Machine
Yes, without previous knowledge, one could easly think that the book was written in recent years
The Lathe of Heaven is even better, if you know about Portland geography and history.
If you’re in the Portland metro area, both Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens are easily visible from anywhere you have a clean line of sight. They’re basic features of the city, you can use them to orient yourself once you can recognize them, which isn’t hard now.
In Lathe, the eruption of Mt. Hood is definitive in letting the reader know which alternate timeline we are in, through the painting in Haber’s office - sometimes erupted, sometimes not.
In the real world, Mt. Hood has never erupted and you can clearly see it intact from Portland. Then again, Mt. St. Helens is not at all intact. It’s a massive crater visible from the city, so obviously an erupted volcano that you can understand where Le Guin got her inspiration from. One destroyed mountain, one intact, and the view makes a perfect argument for a story in which the eruption status of a mountain is pivotal.
Except, Mt. St. Helens erupted in 1980, in the deadliest eruption in US history. Lathe was still written in 1971. I think we all know what this means:
Ursula K Le Guin did Mt. St. Helens.
“The Machine Stops” by E M Forster
A shot novella written 114 years ago which shows you it isnt about which technological era you live in, humans are just waiting to allow technology to make them lazy and cosseted. Makes you realise that authors from generations ago have alwayts been able to see the flaws in humanity, and that the particular technology of our time (social media) is just the current instigator.
In non-fiction, I have to say that “The Abolition of Man” must be the most prescient book I’ve read in a long time.
Lewis puts his finger on the pulse of the exact issue at hand: we’ve taken away the chest (the heart, the soul) in favor of cold sentiment (the head) and base desires (the gut).
I really wish everyone would read it.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835). His foresight into the future of America and the problems our democracy would face is uncanny. Many of those problems have never been resolved and plague our system to this day.
‘Meaningfully’ long ago?–If a few decades is long ago then the first book that came to mind was Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter
You said a few decades ago, so I assumed this book was written after Reagan to explain the shitshow that was his presidency. Then I googled it, because I’m interested in knowing more about the book. It is 60 years old.
I was reading Anna Karenina recently, written/set about a hundred years ago, and I was surprised how modern it felt. People are still people and problems are universal.
100? 150!
Surprised I haven’t seen The Grapes of Wrath mentioned yet - the actual amounts that the labourers are being paid has changed a bit, but the attitudes of the landowners and the sheer, gut-gnawing desperation of the working class felt uncomfortably relevant when I read it.
I read it for the first time recently, and was stunned at how many events of the book I would be completely unsurprised to learn in a newspaper today.
One of the greatest books of all time, completely nails the fundamental ethos of America so perfectly that I think it’ll be relevant until the end of capitalism (if that ever comes)
Things are the same today as when The Grapes of Wrath was written because Steinbeck was a communist and therefore was able to accurately describe capitalism, which is still ruling the USA today.
Agreed