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1981
Volume 22, Issue 1
  • ISSN: 1651-6826
  • E-ISSN: 2040-3801

Abstract

Around November 2019 – the month and year in which ([1982] 2007) is set – the internet was awash in articles asking versions of the same question: ‘Did accurately predict the future?’ Commentators weighed in, assessing the extent to which the future that the film predicted had, in fact, materialized. Similarly, has been hailed as a film that the world in which we now live, and moreover one that has left an in popular culture. Appealing as such claims may be, establishing their truth is more demanding than some suppose. Once we start inquiring into such issues, other questions concerning a film’s relationship to events that predate and postdate it crowd in as well. How can we tell whether something is amongst a film’s ? How can we determine what properly belongs to its ? This article examines these issues with respect to in particular with the aim of drawing conclusions concerning science fiction films more generally. It argues that prediction is an imposition upon science fiction; anticipations are fundamentally distinct from predictions; veridically attributing ‘sources’ and ‘legacies’ to a film requires the identification of real causal connections; and that 's stature as a motion picture is in no need of the extravagant claims that have sometimes been made on its behalf.

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2025-01-24
2026-04-22

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/content/journals/10.1386/fint_00242_1
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  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): anticipation; legacies; philosophy; popular culture; prediction; science fiction; sources

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