posted
Well, if one chooses a thing from Dune, one wouldn't put down the year 12334 but 1965, the date of publishing, as conception. Otherwise Star Wars would be a mite hard.
Who was the first author to come up with energy shields? Off the top of my head I'd say "War of the Worlds" had the oldest ships with tank-repelling shields.
I'm mentioning it because that is an invention we've almost managed to build now, a tank with a plus-pole in the front and a minus in the back, charged with so much electric energy inbetween that an incoming RPG-7 rocket explodes without detonating its shaped charge through the hull.
Registered: Aug 1999
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SWEDE
Ex-Member
posted
Just like Nim' suggests I�d be more interested in when the invention was mentioned in fiction in the first place rather than the time lag between concept and realization of it. Inventions that are yet to be realized shouldn�t be excluded from such a list.
posted
Alfred Bester wrote a minor background character named DR @tkins who gets a page from his "electronic mailbox".
It's just a one-liner at a party (in the book) but it's pretty far-thinking considering the book was written in the 1950's.
I think that while the cell-phone was a logical progression, the flip-phone owes a bit to TOS.
Man, I'd buy a nice TOS-style cell phone.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
I dont know: he had a bitchin' submarine and a very Hunley-esque torpedo/harpoon thing in 20,000 Leagues under the Sea.
That book alone probably inspired generations of sub-designers, if that counts.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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