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!
Notes from Underground from 1864 reads with some of the same soul as some greentexts from 4chan.
I feel like the movies Taxi Driver and Joker are probably inspired by it as well. MAYBE the beginning of Fight Club?
The whole alienated male in a disinterested urban society thing. It is kinda an obvious theme, though, but I don’t think I know of any other works from the 19th century or before like it.