Dick Predicted Viagra
Philip K. Dick’s Galactic Pot-Healer presages the appearance of Viagra and other drugs for erectile dysfunction. Dick called the remedy Hardovax, and I imagine him snickering as he concocted his less-than-delicate pharmenclature.
But Viagra, evoking an ejaculatory Niagra Falls gushing-forth of your, er, vitality, could be considered yet less delicate. The book was written in 1969. Viagra reached market in 1998. Truth is once again stranger than fiction.
You’ll also recall (below) that the title of the book was mistranslated to the French. In the book, there is a game known (in a sociologically ominous way, it seems) simply as The Game, and it involves using poor (over-literal and phoneme-based) computer translators to mangle book titles and then translate them back to the original language, producing riddles to be ciphered (such as “The Lattice-work Gun-stinging Insect” for “The Great Gatsby”). I wonder if the French translator altered the title to Cathedral Healer to be ironic in light of this game in the story. Probably not. They probably thought Galactic Pot-Healer was a horrible title.