1. Mary Shelly Inspired Scientists to Perform Organ Transplants
In her classical sci fi novel, Frankenstein, Shelly, overwhelmed with her own loss of a child imagines reanimated tissue. After the success of her novel, scientists were inspired to make this literary imagination a reality.
"It was on a dreary night in November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet … by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and convulsive motion agitated its limbs (Shelley, 1969)"
2. Gulliver's Travels Predicted that Mars Has Two Moons
The sci fi imagination of Jonathon Smith was the first to objectively decide that the planet Mars has two moons in his novel Gulliver's Travels.
"A recent conference on the moons of Mars reminded me of the wonders that await us even in our own solar system. The two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos, have a storied history. Long before their discovery in 1877, Johannes Kepler speculated that since the Earth had one moon and Jupiter had four known in his time, Mars might have two moons since it orbits between Earth and Jupiter. In 1726 Jonathan Swift, probably influenced by this speculation, wrote in Gulliver's Travels that the scientists of Laputa discovered "two lesser stars, or satellites, which revolve about Mars."
Source: Nasa
3. Captian Nemo and his crew explored the dark depths of the sea in a seemingly impossible futuristic vessel that would later become a thing of our reality.
"As an inspiration to the submarine pioneers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, no other literary figure loomed as large as Jules Verne, the “father of science-fiction” and the author in 1870 of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. American submarine inventor Simon Lake, for example, credited his life-long interest in undersea exploration to having read Verne’s novel as a boy"
Source: Navy.mil
4. Aldous Huxley's Brave New World Invented Antidepressants
How do you curb the worrying of your dystopian sheeple? Easy! Pump them full of pre-zoloft!
"Hence millions of screwed-up minds, improvable even today by clinically-tested mood-boosters and anti-anxiety agents, just suffer in silence instead. In part this is because people worry they might become zombified addicts; and in part because they are unwilling to cast themselves as humble supplicants of the medical profession by taking state-rationed "antidepressants"."
Source: huxley.net
5. Neal Stevenson's Snow Crash Invented Memes
Neal Stevenson's dystopian novel Snow Crash invented Memes. Also, social networking, and virtual networking, thus enabling viral content to be spread in his world.
"Snow Crash is such a novel, weaving virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cybersensibility to bring us the gigathriller of the information age."
Source: Nealstephenson.com
6. Ray Bradbury Invented the Flat Screen TV
In the famous and universally required reading, Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury was the first to introduce the world to the concept of flat screen tvs. Mildred Montaug is obsessed with watching her television dramas on "parlor walls."
"Sixty years ago, in Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury predicted a future with remarkable technological advances, including wall-size flat-panel televisions and iPod-style earbuds."
Source: Interesting Literature
7. 1984: A Cautionary Tale About Police Surveylance
How about we put CAMERAS all over the cops to document their actions? Actually, in doing so, you're creating a real world Orwellian dystopia.
"And on Monday, President Obama said he would request $75 million in federal funds to distribute 50,000 body cameras to police departments nationwide, saying they would improve police relations with the public."
Source: New York Times
