Why I Sci-Fi!

Nearly two-thirds of American adults own a smartphone. We’re tied to our technology-- imagine if it had never been invented. Luckily, science fiction authors were there to help inspire new ideas and inventions with their writing. Science Fiction is beneficial to society because it has helped to inspire new inventions, and it allows people to think about our future. Goddard and his rocket in early stages. Image Source  Firstly, science fiction has helped society by inspiring new inventions. According to Smithsonian.com, inventor Robert H. Goddard “became fascinated with spaceflight after reading an 1898 newspaper serialization of H.G. Wells’ classic novel... War of the Worlds. ” He later went on to build the first rocket.  Without this inspiration, Goddard may never have been inspired to create the rocket-- which means much of the space exploration that scientists have done wouldn't exist. Science fiction was also the inspiration behind the cell phone, which is based...

Sometimes new inventions pop up in the news, and you have to wonder if they're even real! The older I get, the more "space-age" type technology starts showing up in real life. A lot of these cool new inventions were inspired by science fiction from year's past. I'll talk about a few of these in this blog post. 1: The Submarine I wrote about Jules Verne in a previous post linked here. His story 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea  inspired the invention of the Submarine. Verne's story was published in 1870 and featured the Nautilus -- a huge submarine that helped Captain Nemo battle a giant squid. The first submarine was finished in 1898 by American inventor Simon Lake. Lake said that he was directly influence by Verne's story. Here's the late Leonard Nemoy with one of the "communicators." 2: The Cell Phone When Motorola began developing plans for a communications device that you could take anywhere, they looked to Star Trek  for inspi...

This is Jules Verne ( Image Source ) Science Fiction is a genre that's often taken for granted. Nowadays, we're constantly confronted by images of aliens, rocket ships, and far off planets to be discovered. In fiction, we've colonized Mars-- made first encounters with both gracious and evil aliens. This wasn't always the case, however. There was an age where these kinds of ideas were very much alien-- but Jules Verne changed all of that! Ever heard of the Nautilus? Around the World in 80 Days?  All of these stories sprung from the mind of French author Jules Verne. Born in a port city in France, Verne watched the ships and travelers of his home town in constant wonder. Though he wouldn't get to sail the seas and explore until much later in life, the idea of exploration enticed his imagination through his childhood and young adulthood. This is an original illustration from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. ( Image Source ) Verne's writing didn't take ...