Future-Prediction

A 1958 time capsule containing a cryptic message about the coming apocalypse sends a concerned father on a race to prevent the horrific events from unfolding as predicted in Knowing, a March 2009 sci-fi thriller directed by Alex Proyas ('Dark City') and starring Nicolas Cage. As the final date on the list of seemingly random numbers draws near, Professor Koestler — who discovers that they aren't random at all, but an encoded message containing the precise dates, death tolls, and coordinates of every major disaster since the time capsule was buried — enters into a frantic race against time to prevent destruction on a global scale, in the process realizing that in order to save millions of lives, he may have to make the ultimate sacrifice.


PRE-RADIUM AGE

* Robert Grimshaw, Fifty Years Hence, Or What May Be In 1943: A Prophecy Supposed to Be Based on Scientific Deduction By an Improved Graphical Method (Practical Publishing Co.; New York, 1892). See Bleiler.

NINETEEN-OUGHTS (1904-13)

* William Edward Bradden Holt-White, The Man Who Dreamed Right (Everett and Co.; London, 1910). Insignificant Londoner Harry Mymms — a Wellsian small man — discovers that he can accurately predict the future via lucid dreaming. He wins money gambling on sporting events, but worries that doing so is immoral, and confides in an opportunistic, politically connected clergyman. Soon, he's sought after by newspaper magnates, bankers, and politicians; he's kidnapped and rescued, treated like a freak, used like a tool. The Germans capture him, then a benevolent-seeming but ogre-ish Teddy Roosevelt tries to bully him into making predictions for the USA. Mymms becomes a casus belli, since no nation wants any other nation to have him; war is about to break out. The nations appeal to Mymms to dream what will happen as a result of the ongoing negotiations. He dreams of... his own death.

THE TEENS (1914-23)

* David Lindsay, Sphinx (John Long: London, 1923). See Lindsay entry.

THE TWENTIES (1924-33)