1966 - *Analog* was really on the ball

The year 1966 was - at least for Analog - a good year for sf foresight.

The March issue contained JE Enever’s Giant Meteor Impact predicting the climatic and other consequences of an asteroid impact - even if wasn’t of dinosaur-killer dimensions. Today, of course, every other tv drama seems to be some variation on that theme. I often think Enever should try and get royalties.

The very next month, the magazine carried Poul Anderson’s A Sun Invisible which introduced me, at any rate, to the concept of rogue planets, which is now fascinating the world of astronomy. Or does anyone know of an earlier use of the idea?

Finally in September John W Campbell himself wrote an editorial on pollution in which he noted that a “world city” like Asimov’s Trantor, was impossible because (among diverse problems) far too much heat would be generated, and observed that this was starting to be noticeable on earth because when it was snowing in his neighbourhood 25 miles out, it was raining in New York City - something far less common 40 years earlier. He didn’t anticipate quite how soon we might be headed for the Trantor situation, but he was nearer the mark than anyone else I’m aware of.

Perhaps, if we want to predict the future, we should dig out our old Analogs.

Great post, Mike!

Fascinating to note that while Enever’s (rather terrifying) story predated even the theory that the dinosaur extinction was caused by a massive impact event, he explains that “Earth has been repeatedly hit by very large meteorites, their speed unchecked by virtue of their enormous size. Evidence for this has been piling up for the past sixty years.”

Also, this has prompted me to discover the Luminist Archives of old science fiction magazines – a treasure trove which includes full PDF scans of many Analog issues, including the March, April, and September 1966 issues you mention!