"For distances of less than a hundred kilometers, it was not necessary to have your passport stamped. But there were sometimes patrols that prowled around the stations." No, these words are not taken from the logbook of a Frenchman in confinement, or from a diary describing the strict restrictions on movement which ended on May 11, but from a novel written in ... 1948. Indeed, like George Orwell in 1984 , many writers have sometimes described in their work facts that are implausibly similar to events that occurred a few years later.
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In 1984 , Georges Orwell therefore writes: "It was also not easy to travel alone without attracting attention. For distances less than a hundred kilometers, it was not necessary to have your passport stamped, but it sometimes there were patrols running around the station side. " If the mentions of controls in stations and the limit of 100 kilometers can remind us of our news, it is ultimately not surprising, a novel of anticipation asking, by definition, questions about what could happen in the future. And indeed, in 1984 , several visions of the future turned out to be exact or roughly, so much so that today, as soon as we speak of restrictions on liberties, we quote this novel.
The pandemic present in many novels
But to keep only these predictions makes forget that many nightmares of 1984 did not occur. In addition, Orwell did not want to prophesy, but to point out dysfunctions of his own time and to warn the future generations.
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The theme of the pandemic itself is at the heart of numerous works published in the past, such as Le fléau by Stephen King, Némésis , by Philippe Roth, or Pandémia by Franck Thilliez. But if some readers might be tempted to say that these authors had planned everything, at a time when the whole world is struck by the coronavirus, it is to forget that there are two to three pandemics per century. It is therefore not an invention of the future, but history that repeats itself.
Titanic sinking describes 14 years ahead
Obviously, a writer must be very strong in describing such likely future behavior. One of the most spectacular cases is that of Morgan Robertson's novel Futility , published 14 years before the sinking of the Titanic, and whose similarities to the sinking of the mythical ship make you dizzy. The book thus tells the story of a large boat, proud of the technology and science of its time, and called ... the Titan. The ship described in the novel is 240 meters long against 269 for the Titanic, has three propellers, like the Titanic, and like the shipwrecked in 1912, is considered unsinkable and has a limited number of lifeboats.
This is not to say that Morgan Robertson had gifts of premonition. On the other hand, he had great maritime knowledge, and was above all gifted for describing the spirit of the times at a time marked by the race for gigantism, progress, etc.