The following is a reprint from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges Into the Universe. A while ago, we posted "10 Things That Science Fiction Got Wrong" but believe it or not, there are many things that sci-fi got right as well. From communication satellites to robotic pets, here are a few of the things that science fiction nailed before they happened.

Science fiction is supposed to predict future events - and to be entirely honest, some of us are getting impatient waiting for our own rocket cars to the Moon, which we understood we'd have by now. Be that as it may, here are some things dreamed up by science fiction writers that are part of our real world.

1. Moon Visits

Lots of science fiction writers had this one covered, but the question is: Who got closest to the real thing first?

The best candidate is good ol' Jules Verne, whose 1865 novel, From the Earth to the Moon, and the 1870 follow-up, Around the Moon, nailed a lot of the minutiae of a moon visit, including weightlessness, the basic size of the space capsule, the size of the crew (three men), and even the concept of splashdown into the ocean on return to Earth. In one of those fun coincidences, the fictional splashdown in Around the Moon was just a few miles from where the actual Apollo 8 capsule splashed down (and, interestingly enough, the fictional launch pad was just a few miles from Cape Canaveral).

Verne was tremendously prolific, writing two novels a year for much of his creative life and dying with quite a few novels unpublished. It's not entirely surprising that he's credited with a number of other predictions, including trips by balloon, helicopters, tanks, and electrical engines. One "discovery" he's famously credited for, the submarine, is inaccurate, since submarines existed prior to the 1870 publication of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

2. Robots (and Robot Pets!)

"Robot" comes from the Czech word robota, which means "drudgery"; robotnik is a word for "serf." Since today's robots are typically found in industrial setting doing mindlessly repetitive work, this is a strangely appropriate term.

The word "robot" was popularized in Karel Capek's 1920 play R.U.R., which stood for Rossum's Universal Robots. In the play, robots were manufactured humans who were used as cheap labor. One day they got fed up with this and decided to have a revolution and kill all the humans, proving once again that good help really is hard to find.

One thing people don't seem to know about Capek's "robots" is that they're not actually mechanical - they're made out of synthetic flesh, although that flesh was then put into a stamping mill to make the bodies.

The concept of robots as mechanical beings came later and was most famously popularized in fiction by writer Isaac Asimov in his Robot series. It's probably not a coincidence that a humanoid robot manufactured by Honda is called "Asimo."

Robot pets, like the Sony Aibo robot dog, have also been a staple of science fiction. The most famous example of this is probably Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the Philip K. Dick novel that was the source material for the movie Blade Runner.

The main character in the book is saving up to buy a realistic electric sheep for his lawn, so he'll be the envy of his neighbors (the movie had none of this suburban one-upmanship going on).

Woody Allen, of all people, nailed the robot dog in 1973's Sleeper, in which we're introduced to Rags ("Hi! I'm Rags! Woof woof!"). Allen's reaction: "Is he housebroken? Or will he be leaving little piles of batteries all over the place?"

3. Cloning and Genetic Engineering

Humans haven't been cloned yet (as far as we know), but sheep, cats, cow, and rabbits have. And humans have used genetic engineering and gene therapy to improve their bodies. In June 2002, for example, it was announced that genetically modified cells helped to create functioning immune systems in two "bubble boys" who were born without immune systems of their own.

The most famous work of science fiction with cloning and genetic engineering is also one of the earliest: 1932's Brave New World , by Aldous Huxley. In it, humans are "graded" into jobs and social classes based on the number of clones that were made from their originating embryos; the higher the number of clones, the less bright they are and the more menial their jobs (this was backed by a social agenda that assured each level of humanity that they were actually the best, so everyone went along with it).

4. The Internet

Okay, now, who wants to be blamed for this one? There are so many culprits. Author William Gibson is credited with coining the term "cyberspace" in his 1981 short story "Burning Chrome," and kick-started the whole media fascination with computers and the Internet and all that geekiness with his seminal 1984 novel Neuromancer.

But even before Gibson, John Brunner's 1975 novel, The Shockwave Rider, posited a continent-wide information net, "hackers" who broke into the net, identity theft (when someone pretends to be someone else online), and most famously, computer viruses and worms - the terminology for these, in fact, comes from Brunner's book. Brunner imagined using viruses and worms as part of warfare - something that worries today's military quite a bit.

It should be noted that in 1975 a proto-form of the Internet did exist, thought not in the scope and complexity imagined by Brunner. It existed in the form of ARPANET, a decentralized computer system that the US Department of Defense created and which by 1975 also included several research universities as "nodes." Internet features created by 1975 include E-mail, online chat, and mailing lists. The most popular mailing list in 1975? One on science fiction, of course.

5. The World Wide Web

... which, despite the propaganda of the 1990s, is not the whole Internet, just a subsection of it - was created in 1991 by Tim Berners-Lee and hit the big time with the creation of the Mosaic Web browser in 1993.

The dynamic of the Net had been described before then. In 1990's Earth, David Brin imagined a streaming audio and video and clickable hypertext links. And in a 1989 short story, "The Originist," based in Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" universe, Orson Scott Card also created a linking system similar to today's hyperlinking.

6. Webcams?

Imagined (sort of) by every single science fiction author who ever wrote about a picture phone. There are too many of those to bother counting.

7. Waterbeds

Yes, waterbeds. Robert Heinlein used them in 1961's Stranger in a Strange Land ; the first modern waterbed was created in 1967 in San Francisco by design student Charles Hall, who dubbed it the "pleasure pit" (naughty boy).

Heinlein also thought up the idea of remotely controlled machines to manipulate dangerous materials; he called them "waldoes," and that's what they're called today.

8. Communications Satellites

Science fiction master Arthur C. Clarke is famous for having thought of these in 1945.

9. Space Tourists

When millionaire Dennis Tito put down his $20 million and hitched a ride into space with the Russians, he became the first tourist in space.

The idea of punting rich folks beyond the stratosphere is not new; in 1962's A Fall of Moondust , Arthur C. Clarke told the tale of some rich tourists who get stranded in a moon crater.

More whimsically, author Roald Dahl imagined a "Space Hotel, USA" in 1973's Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, complete with a staff of "managers, assistant managers, desk-clerks, waitresses, bellboys, chambermaids, pastry chefs, and hall porters."

10. Miniaturized Surgery

Doctors these days use miniaturized tools to perform surgery that's less invasive and more precise than traditional surgery, a practice suggested by Isaac Asimov in his 1966 novel, Fantastic Voyage.

It's worth noting, however, that along with miniaturized surgical tools, Asimov also shrunk the doctors to fit into the patient's body. We haven't managed that one yet.

The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges Into the Universe.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!

The following is reprinted from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges Into the Universe.

Most of the time we're willing to shovel down the popcorn and watch Yoda lift X-Wings out of the swamp using nothing but the Force and a smattering of questionably parsed English, or let Jean-Luc Picard get the Enterprise out of a scrape by the convenient discovery of yet another type of particle beam. But every once in a while we just have to vent about some of the truly egregious "fiction" in science fiction.

1. Sounds in Space

The tag line from Alien got it right: "In Space, no one can hear you scream". The reason no one can hear you scream is that sound needs air to travel in, and there's none in space.

Most of space is a hard vacuum, with a molecule or two of hydrogen floating around in every cubic meter - not nearly enough to transmit sound. Every sound in the movies, from photon torpedoes and laser beams to exploding starships and hyperspace booms, would never happen in real life.

For that matter, you'd never see laser beams in space either, since in a vacuum there's no medium to reveal them. So a real-life laser dog fight in space would be really boring to watch.

2. Faster-Than-Light Travel

Warp drives and hyperspace are very useful in science fiction, but there's one catch. According to Einstein, the speed of light isn't just a good idea, it's the law. Nothing can go faster than the speed of light in a vacuum (that's about 186,000 miles per second).

Even inching toward the speed of light is difficult - immense energy is required to get to even a fraction of the speed of light, and the closer you get to the speed of light, the more energy is required. The amount of energy you'd need to achieve the speed of light is infinite (i.e., more than you've got, even with those supercool long-lasting batteries). So just tossing in a few more dilithium crystals into the warp drives isn't going to make it happen.

There are loopholes in our understanding of the physics that make faster-than-light travel theoretically possible. For example, it's theoretically possible to create a "bubble" of space that breaks itself off from other space and moves faster than light relative to that space (all the while everything inside both "spaces" moves no faster than the speed of light). This is known as an Alcubierre Warp Bubble. The catch (there had to be one) is that these bubbles require the existence of exotic matter that has negative energy, and wouldn't you know, there isn't really any lying around, and it's not clear that any actually exists.

3. Laser Bolts You Can Dodge

Aside from the issue of Imperial Stormtroopers being bad shots, let's review a fundamental fact of light (which is what lasers are): It travels at 186,000 miles per second. So the idea of ducking before the laser hits you is just plain silly.

Not to mention (of course) the idea of a laser bolt being visible as a streak that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. If you were zapped by a laser from a laser gun, it would look like a single stream of light, with one end attached to the barrel of said gun, and the end attached to whatever portion of your head had not melted yet (assuming you're having a laser battle somewhere where there is enough air around to illuminate the entire beam).

Most "laser" beams in science fiction movies travel slower than bullets do today. Let's see Obi Wan whip his light saber around fast enough to stop the spray of a Mac-10 (and let's not even begin to talk about all the things wrong with a sword made of light).

4. Human-Looking Aliens

This is endemic on the various Star Trek series, where creatures from entirely different sectors of the universe look just like humans except for the occasional bulging ridge on their foreheads. Yes, this is the result of having only humans at casting calls, but in a large sense, all these "humanoid" variations ain't gonna happen.

Look, humans evolved on earth and shared a basic body format (four limbs, one head, side-to-side symmetry) with just about every other vertebrate on the planet. It's a form that works fine for this planet, but not even every vertebrate sticks with it (see: snakes, whales, seals, etc).

Given that any planet with life on it will have that life evolve in it's own way, the chances of the universe being stocked with chesty alien princesses who crave human starship captains is slim at best.

Related to this is the following.

5. Half-Breed Aliens

Humans don't even interbreed with other species here on earth. Our DNA is simply too different from other species to allow such a mating to produce offspring.

Given this, what are the chances of successful mating with an alien species that may not even have DNA as its genetic encoding medium?

Also going back to the idea that aliens probably won't look like Humans, how would you do it anyway? It's not exactly the "Insert Tab A Into Slot B" proposition it would be here at home.

6. Brain-Sucking Aliens

The Good News of an Alien Facehugger Attack T-Shirt, art by Mike Jacobsen

Ditto aliens that control your body by using your brains, or gestate in your chest, or whatnot. Let's posit that any creature that controls the brain of any other creature (not that any exist here on Earth) does so only after a few million years of what's called "speciation" – i.e., one species eventually enters a symbiotic relationship with another species. This relationship would have to be pretty specific, as symbiotic relationships are here on Earth.

Which is to say just because you're in a symbiotic relationship with one species doesn't mean it transfers over to another species, especially an alien species, who's body chemistry, DNA, brain wiring, etc., isn't even remotely close to your own. So don't worry about the "Puppet Master" scenario too much, or that you'll be nothing more than a glorified egg sac for some nasty breed of space monster.

7. Shape-Shifting Aliens

Shape-changing aliens are all very well, but there's a tiny problem in having a roughly human sized lump of alien protoplasm turning itself into, say, a rat, to scurry around in the ventilation shaft: Where does rest of the alien go? You can't just make 99% of your mass disappear into thin air (or reappear, as the case may be); it has to go somewhere.

Unless that "rat" is running around with a highly compressed mass of a human-sized object (which presents its own problems), shape-shifting in to different sized objects is not very likely (one of the smart things about Terminator 2 was that the T-1000 only shape shifted into things of roughly the same mass, like human beings or a floor).

8. Time Travel

Got an itch to spend time in the Arthurian England? Or perhaps Gettysburg during the Civil War?

The same relativistic principles that keep us from going faster than light also keep us rom traveling backward in time and messing with the past. It's possible to slow down time - the closer you get to the speed of light, the slower time moves for you relative to your original frame of reference - but to get the clock spinning in the other direction would require you to go faster than light, and you can't do that.

Again, there are theoretical loopholes that could allow it - worm holes, actually, which are "tunnels" in the fabric of space-time that could possibly allow travel back in time. but once again, keeping these wormholes open would require exotic matter with negative energy. Got any? Neither do we.

9. The Planetary Gravity Scam

Everywhere you go in science fiction, people are walking around like they weigh just what they do on Earth. Chances of that happening in the real universe? Slim. Consider our own solar system. On Mars, a 180-pound man would weigh just 70 pounds; on Jupiter, 424 pounds (not that you can walk on Jupiter, as it has no solid surface). That man on the moon? Just 30 pounds. The man's mass is the same, it's just that different planets have different gravitational pulls.

The idea that all the planets that humans might visit would exactly match Earth's own gravitational profile is a little much. As is, alternately, the idea that all alien creatures would be as comfortable in our gravitational field as we are.

10 The Planetary Sameness Principle

Tatooine looks just like the Yuma Desert in Arizona. Actually, it is the Yuma Desert of Arizona! I stand corrected, it's Tunisia ... y'know, on the continent of Africa, Earth. Photo via Wookieepedia

The desert planet of Tatooine. The ice planet of Hoth. The jungle planet of Dagobah. What do these planets all have in common? One planetary-wide ecosystem. Which isn't too likely.

Our own planet has varying zones and ecological areas: desert, tundra, jungle, and so on; other planets in the system also show marked zones of varying atmospheric and weather patterns. Mars has ice caps as well as (relatively) temperate zones; Jupiter has distinct weather systems based in different areas on its globe. The planets that show a sameness are the ones we couldn't live on. Venus is all desert, but that's because a runaway greenhouse effect makes it hot enough to melt lead. Pluto is all ice, but it's so far away from the Sun that its atmosphere freezes for most of its orbit.

There may well be purely desert or jungle planets, but most planets we'd want to live on would probably be able to accommodate both.

The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges Into the Universe.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!

The following is reprinted from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges Into the Universe.

The question of which science fiction books are the best ever is a pointless one for most people, since many of the "greatest science fiction novels" are books that no one but science fiction fans will read. A better question to ask might be: What are the best science fiction books that you don't have to be a hard-core science fiction fan to enjoy? We scanned our library and came up with these 10 (well, 12) books that not only provide great SF fun, but also are approachable enough for the casual reader. Some old, some new - but all good reads.

Dune by Frank Herbert

David Lynch made this book into a 1984 film that was so incomprehensible that the actual novel - 600 pages on the future of religion, politics, desert ecology, and drug trafficking - look positively streamlined in comparison. When the book came out in the mid 1960s its multiple story threads were daunting. (Photo: Robert E. Nylund, via Wikipedia)

But (ironically) thanks to shows like The X-Files and even The West Wing, in which several things are happening all at once, people got used to following intersecting story lines. The result is that Herbert's magnum opus now comes across more like an epic historical novel that happens to be set in the future, not the past.

Herbert wrote several Dune sequels of varying quality. More recently, Herbert's son Brian teamed up with SF author Kevin J. Anderson to write a trio of prequels that Uncle John doesn't think are on par with the rest. Stick with the original.

Links: Dune | More by Frank Herbert

Earth by David Brin

Scientists in the near future create a tiny black hole and - oops - allow it to sink into the earth's core; in the process of digging it out, they discover there's another black hole down there, and that one's origin is a mystery - and a problem. (Photo: David Brin)

This plot line is the skeleton on which author and real-life physicist Brin hangs some fascinating episodic story lines that involve problems the world faces today (global warming, privacy, energy crunches), carried out to their possible outcomes 50 years from now.

Originally published in 1991, Earth has already pegged a couple of items correctly (such as a version of the World Wide Web and the idea of futzing with old movies using new computer graphics). Plus, scientists have begun trying to generate tiny little black holes in labs. So imagine what else Brin might (eventually) be right about.

Links: Earth | More by David Brin

Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead, by Orson Scott Card

Supersmart child-warriors are used by the military to battle an invasion of buglike aliens. That's the setup of Ender's Game; the meat of the story comes from the struggle of one of these extraordinary children (named Ender) to keep a grip on his humanity even as he's being turned into the perfect killing machine. (Photo: nihonjoe via Wikipedia)

Card sets up a lot of questions about morality, war, and man's purpose in Ender's Game; in the sequel, Speaker for the Dead, these questions get a payoff as the grown-up Ender finds himself in a position to save a new sentient species or allow it to be destroyed. Proof that interesting philosophical questions can be asked (and even answered) in the form of a purely entertaining story.

Links: Ender's Game | More by Orson Scott Card

Grass by Sheri Tepper

Like Dune, this is a large tale involving nobility, religion, politics, and the fate of the human race - but for a change, the hero is a heroine. (Photo: Charles N. Brown, via Locus Online)

Marjorie Westriding is dispatched with her family to a far-off planet to find a cure for a plague, but she ends up confronting questions of original sin among aliens. Lots of philosophy, and even some sex (well, sort of), but also lots of action, plus a group of purely malevolent creatures who love nothing better than to toy with humans. Hand this to someone who enjoys those massive romantic epics for a change of pace.

Links: Grass | More by Sheri Tepper

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Earth is destroyed to make an intergalactic bypass, launching the interstellar travels of one completely ordinary and befuddled human being named Arthur Dent. (Photo Jill Furmanovsky, via DouglasAdams.com)

Geeks love this one, but for the right reasons - namely because it'll make you laugh so hard that you may vomit involuntarily. Note that this is humor of the distinctly British, Monty Python-like variety, so if you're not into that, you may wonder what the fuss is about.

But if you ever laughed at Monty Python and the Holy Grail (or even A Fish Called Wanda), you'll be laughing at this one, too. Hitchhiker has several sequels, each progressively less funny than the one before (but still worth a chuckle or two).

Links: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy | More by Douglas Adams

Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons

It takes guts to snatch the format of The Canterbury Tales and use it to crank out epic science fiction, but the extraordinarily talented Dan Simmons (who also writes bang-up horror and action novels) is just the guy to do it. (Photo: Dan Simmons)

Over the course of these two novels, Simmons creates a galaxy-wide human civilization that's pitted against a mysterious enemy. Hyperion uses the overlapping stories of a clutch of pilgrims to paint the picture of this future civilization; Fall of Hyperion describes its downfall, as seen through the eye of a clone of the great Romantic poet John Keats.

Great storytelling, great action, great plotting; not just a couple of the best science fiction novels ever, but two of the best adventure novels in a long time, period.

Links: Hyperion | The Fall of Hyperion | More by Dan Simmons

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

This one shows up on a lot of high school reading lists, and for good reason. It's a fine combination of science fiction and fantasy and an increasingly neglected literary form - a series of short stories, hung together with a single thread: they all take place on Mars. (Photo: Alan Light, via Flickr)

The stories include encounters with real live Martians (who may or may not be happy to see humans), the stories of the humans who leave Earth to come to Mars, and, in the end, the stories of the humans who are left behind, each short enough to be read in a single sitting.

It's Bradbury at the top of his form, which means these are some of the better short stories you'll find almost anywhere.

Links: The Martian Chronicles | More by Ray Bradbury

Perdido Street Station by China Miéville

The perfect book for anyone who thinks that science fiction can't be literary and/or adventurous in form. Miéville's genre-buster of a novel is not unlike what you would get if you spliced together the genes of Charles Dickens and horror master H.P. Lovecraft and raised the resulting creature on the writings of Orwell, Huxley, and Philip K. Dick (the fellow who wrote the story that was the basis of the movie Blade Runner). (Photo: Andrew M Butler, via Flickr)

It's difficult to describe the novel, except to say that it involves mad scientists, interspecies romance, vampiric moth creatures, Tammany Hall-like urban politics, the value systems of alien species, interdimensional spiders, and a rip-roaring final action scene that takes place on the rooftops of a city you really can't imagine. All written by someone who uses the English language like Yo-Yo Ma uses a cello. Fabulous writing, regardless of genre.

Links: Perdido Street Station | More by China Mieville

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

William Gibson's Neuromancer may be considered the first "cyberpunk" novel, but the fact is, it's kind of a deadly bore. Snow Crash, on the other hand, is a real hoot right from its first scene, which involves a madcap pizza delivery and is written with the same sort of delirious cinematic urgency that you'll find in the best novels of William Goldman (Marathon Man). (Photo: Bob Lee via Flickr)

The novel's plot involves a computer virus that (get this) dates back to Sumeria, but it doesn't really hang together, so instead, enjoy the book for its portrayal of both an insanely Balkanized America and a huge cyberworld so vividly imagined that a whole bunch of Internet companies bankrupted themselves in the 1990s trying to create a world just like it.

Also, any book that features a large Aleutian with a nuclear bomb in a motorcycle sidecar and the words "Poor Impulse Control" tattooed on his forehead is one you know you're going to have fun with.

Links: Snow Crash | More by Neal Stephenson

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein

The expiration date for this novel and its ideas regarding love and sex and human transcendence has sort of passed (people used the novel for years as a foundation for their own desire for hippie polygamy, and now they don't so much), but it still make for a good read for two reasons. (Photo: Dd-b, via Wikimedia Commons)

One, Robert Heinlein wrote damn fine dialogue, which makes him more fun to read than most other writers today (and how sad is that, since Heinlein's been dead coming up on 15 years now). Two, Heinlein thought seriously about the nature of God and the interrelationship between God and His followers, which is interesting to contemplate even if you're not interested in the polysexual hijinks.

Also, Jubal Harshaw, the cranky old man who counsels the "Stranger" is like a dyspeptic Yoda advising an extraordinarily horny Luke Skywalker, is one of the great curmudgeons of the 20th century writing, and you don't want to miss out on a character like that.

Links: Stranger in a Strange Land | More by Robert A. Heinlein

The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges Into the Universe.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!