Authors who were prophets?

Sometimes authors become prophets of events yet to come. Morgan Robertson, an Edwardian-era author, penned a novella in 1898 entitled Futility in which an ocean liner eerily similar to the Titanic hits an iceberg and sinks. Though the plot itself did not resemble what happened on April 14-15, 1912, the similarities between the demise of the two ships is still striking.   

Recent tensions between North and South Korea have witnessed over flights by U.S. bombers over South Korea CBS news recently reported. This has been done in an attempt to quell the bellicose rhetoric of North Korea, a nation that has threatened the United States with nuclear attack. The over flight and nuclear angles are alarmingly similar to a scenario Nevil Shute postulated in his post-apocalyptic novel On the Beach. That scenario featured a military over flight to Cairo, Egypt by the United States and Britain as an attempt to quell Egyptian support to Arab nations attacking Israel.  

The results are disastrous: Egypt, equipped with Soviet Union-made bombers, launches a nuclear strike on both London and Washington DC, inadvertently triggering a nuclear war with the Soviets in the process. It is true that in this real-life scenario we have a rouge state alone and isolated. There is no chance a nuclear strike by Pyongyang could be taken as coming from anywhere but North Korea. The risks of a global nuclear war are slim to none. Nevertheless, the United States’ recent display of muscle might backfire in the form of a bellicose response, even if it is limited to conventional warfare along Korea's 38th parallel.

Nevil Shute can nevertheless be added to the ranks of authors who foresaw future events quite by chance. Nuclear weapons have by now proliferated, just like he depicted in his novel. And rouge states like North Korea are arming themselves with them, again just like he depicted them doing. No matter the actual outcome, I believe it can be fairly argued that Shute foresaw future standoffs with the likes of North Korea.

All of the above brings a question to mind: What other authors wrote a work of fiction that foresaw real-life events?

Image courtesy Wikimedia.