20 Ways Yesterday's People Correctly Predicted Tomorrow

The author predicted mobile phones in The Struggle in Space from 1928. He called them wireless telephones back then. Phones were invented in 1876.

Lem wrote his novel, The Magellanic Cloud, in 1955, predicting internet, smartphones, and 3D printing. He also talked about E-readers and audiobooks in Return from the Stars (1961) and a life simulation game in The Cyberiad (1965).

His short story titled “The Machine Stops” predicted smart homes, television, and social media in 1909. The author mentioned he wrote the story as a rebuttal of H.G. Wells' A Modern Utopia.

The Last Miracle (1907) from M. P. Shiel features hologram technology.

The prolific sci-fi author predicted so many of today's technologies that it's a bit suspicious, really. The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) features organ transplants almost 60 years before the first real transplant. The War of the Worlds (1898) has lasers and chemical weapons; When the Sleeper Wakes (1899) features military aviation and automatic doors; "The Land Ironclads" (1903) talks about tanks and joysticks with firing buttons; The World Set Free (1914) mentions an atomic bomb and an atomic engine; and Men Like Gods (1923) features technology similar to the email and voicemail.

Pygmalion's Spectacles (1935) features Magic spectacles, which are pretty similar to smartglasses or Virtual Reality today.

While earlier stories mention things like androids, R.U.R. (1920) is the first fictional work to mention Robots. It's believed this is where the term was born. Capek also predicted the nuclear reactor in The Absolute at Large (1922).

Another prolific author with too many predictions to be just a coincidence. In the short story “The Veldt” (1950), he talks about Happylife Home, some kind of smart home, and odorophonics, the closest thing to 4D film at the time. He also predicted robotic vacuum cleaners in "There Will Come Soft Rains" (1950) and self-driving cars in "The Pedestrian" (1951). Fahrenheit 451 (1953) also features earphones, flat-screen televisions, and ATMs.

1911's sci-fi novel Ralph 124C 41+ is considered badly written but also an inspiration for many other writers. It features solar-powered technology, televisions, tape recorders, films with sound, videocalls, radars, and spaceflight.

Electropolis (1928) by Otfrid von Hanstein predicted the microwave oven and the GPS, although he didn't use those names.

In 1880, author Mary Bradley Lane was talking about synthetic meat in her feminist science fiction utopian novel, Mizora. 

While Asimov's works are loved all around the world, he didn't really predict as much technology as other authors. However, he was already talking about pocket calculators in Foundation (1951), fingerprint scanners in The Caves of Steel (1953), and flatscreen 3D TVs and domestic robots in The Naked Sun (1956).

Albert Robida's Electric Life came out in 1891, and he imagined a lot of what electricity would be able to give us decades later. The novel includes television (called Telephonoscope), videotelephony, aviation (called aeronefs-omnibus), and biological weapons. The story also features miniskirts before they existed.

A very early sci-fi story mentions something that's referred to only as the Machine, but is described as a space rocket. Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon was published by Cyrano de Bergerac in 1657.

In 1921, author Clement Fezandié predicted cloning in "The Secret of Artificial Reproduction."

While he's known for his Sherlock Holmes stories, Arthur Conan Doyle also wrote science fiction that predicted the future. "The Great Brown Pericord Motor" is the title of the story, and that motor is actually what we'd call a drone today.

The prolific author predicted space stations in Islands in the Sky (1952), oral contraceptives and DNA paternity tests in Childhood's End (1953), and virtual reality games in The City and the Stars (1956). Other works also feature tablets and voice-user interface (2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968) and personalized ads and search engines (Imperial Earth, 1975).

While we can't say Huxley predicted everyone would be happy by taking pills, Brave New World (1932) does feature 4D cinema.

A Journey in Other Worlds is a 1894 novel that features lots of predictions: an international telephone network, videocalls, hidden cameras, radar speed guns, and chemical weapons.

The popular author included elements like electric submarines, gas-discharge lamps, and tasers in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas in 1870.