Science fiction has brought us predictions that rage from the logical to the ludicrous through the years. Some of these predictions have failed miserably and often hysterically, but others have become commonplace. We’re going to take a look at the stuff that proved true and leave why I don’t have a flying car for future discussion…One of the most startling predictions was made by none other than Samuel Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain, in a 1904 London Times article. In the article he hypothesized a device he called the “telectroscope”. It was basically a telephone system that allowed instant communication sharing on a global scale while allowing the “daily doings of the globe made visible” and audible through the system. That sounds a lot like the internet to me.

Back when the world knew a little about nuclear decay, H.G. Wells conceived of the atomic bomb. In his 1914 work, The World Set Free, Wells not only coined the phrase “atomic bomb”, but speculated that radioactive fallout could have adverse effects on living tissue. Years later Gene Roddenberry proceeded to predict an amazing number of items from the mundane to the fantastic in his various Star Trek series. His communicators from the original series clearly foreshadowed the flip phone and Uhura’s ear piece is more than a little reminiscent of Bluetooth technology. Later series even introduced the equivalent of an iPad. However, one of his most amazing predictions was the common usage of the warp drive.

Even as I type scientists are working with negative energy, a force that was believed not to exist until recently, in the first baby steps to a warp propulsion system. In a similar vein research into Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen entanglement is hinting that the transporter systems in Roddenberry’s universe may also one day be possible. We can thank our lucky stars that legions of school aged kids ignored their parents when they told them to “Stop reading that trash!” Our world might certainly be a different place without science fiction.