Fiction Is the Mother of Invention

Here are five ideas that first appeared in sci-fi fiction that are now a reality. (Yeah, I'm a nerd. Big surprise.)

My favorite part of the article? The bit about my favorite sci-fi author, Ray Bradbury:

Televisions were still black-and-white behemoths in 1953 when Ray Bradbury wrote "Fahrenheit 451." But his world, in which books are banned and people watch "parlor walls," presaged a society in which television dominated.

The big-screened sci-fi entertainment systems of his dystopian novel have found their way into real-life homes across America, with digital home theater systems, media servers and video game systems played on giant plasma and LCD screens.

Even though he foresaw the color TV panels of the future, Bradbury told L.A. Weekly in 2007 — after being awarded the first Pulitzer Prize given to a science-fiction writer — that his novel reflected his fear that TV would kill interest in reading and literature.

"They stuff you with so much useless information, you feel full," he said.

However, noted the article, "he says this while sitting in a room dominated by a gigantic flat-panel television broadcasting the Fox News Channel, muted, factoids crawling across the bottom of the screen."

Ray Bradbury is a fan of the Fox News Channel!

(My view of Bradbury's classic, Fahrenheit 451 is best saved for another post but that's the thing I love about Bradbury: he's still full of surprises. (Or maybe not. A close read of his work shows a consistency that's admirable. He's got a strong conservative streak that you might find unexpected. Park your assumptions at the door, I say.)