I am a geek.

Some of you know this. But, what you might not know, is that, as a geek, I love science-fiction. Not all of it, though. I don't watch Battlefield:Earth or Andromeda or Seven Days or any of that shit. Mostly, I like to read it.

I'm very lucky, because my dad was a science fiction geek too. He had some great old books, ancient books, really. The kind of books I really love, old musty paperbacks from the '20s. The pages are falling out, but they have that old book smell and a charmingly kitsch big old '5 cents' in the upper right hand corner. On their covers there was usually some artist's rendition of a rocket-shaped spaceship on the moon, maybe a green slimy monster clutching a girl, with the earth hanging in the background. You know, major cheese to us, but probably enough to fascinate the children of the day and inspire their daydreams. Still, though...the stories within were the important thing.

One of them was especially, startlingly prescient. I've included an excerpt below. Replace the word 'logic' with the word 'computer' and you'll see this writer was dead on. Remember, it was 1946 when the author, Murray Leinster, wrote this story.

"You know the logic setup. You got a logic in your house...it's got keys instead of dials, and you punch the keys for what you wanna get...Say you punch in 'Sally Hancocks phone' and the screen blinks and sputters and you're hooked up with the logic in her house and if somebody answers you got a vision-phone connection. But, besides that, if you punch for the weather forecast or who won today's race at Hialeah or who the mistress of the White House during Garfield's administration or what is PDQ and R selling for today, that comes on the screen too. The relays in the tank do it. The tank is a big building full of all of the facts in creation and all the recorded telecasts that ever was made-and it's hooked in with all the other tanks all over the country-and everything you wanna know or see or hear, you punch for it and you get it. Very convenient. Also, it does math for you, and keeps books, and acts as a consulting chemist, physicist, astronomer, and tea-leaf reader, with an 'Advice to Lovelorn' thrown in."

1946, people. Someone wrote that in 1946.