What Do You Think Science Fiction Is?

I noticed that some have metioned that programs like Star Trek and X-Files and other shows are just science fiction and they are not interested in science fiction, versus facts. So the question came up and people don't have a clue as to what things that we have today that was just science fiction years ago.

What kinds of things were myths or considered science fict years or decades ago that are actual things today?
I can name a few that came right out of Star Trek...and I mean the Original show back in the 1960's.

 

Well, this is old now, but men on the moon.

 

I think Science Fiction is taking the imagination beyond known realms. I, personally, like a good science fiction story. If the author makes the people real and interesting, it doesn't matter what the setting is. It can take place in the distant historical past or the far future. The story is the thing.

Anne McCaffrey's Dragonsdawn series is one of my favorites.

 

Now that was an interesting answer that I didn't think about when I wrote the question. Thanks.

 

Almost everything we have and use today was science fiction 25years before it was invented. It was science fiction to fly in a heavier than air machine. It was science fiction to send voices or pictures through the air. I think science fiction is what stimulates science to search for new ideas.

 

We still don't have flying cars like the jetsons did.

 

Who says they have not

 

When it comes to science fiction stories, I have to ask my husband because that is his forte. In fact, he had written so many science fiction stories that he had posted in his blog - www.fantascific.blogspot.com. That is his passion not because of the stories itself but of the backdrop that is science. He said that science fiction writers are different from literary writers because they know true science. You cannot write science fiction stories if you don't know anything about general science. One item that he remembers to be coming true is the issue of the Arabian oil - that it will be worthless with the alternative energy so Arabia will be back to become the desert that it was.

 

I think it is a combination of a great imagination and true science, and of things being created now or already in existence. Then add in a bit of things like the x-files, with no explanation. I like reading some science fiction but my favorite is detective stories. Though both forms can be created from imagination or real life.

 

Interesting.

 

We got cell phones and pagers from the Original Star Trek shows. The thing that I have no seen yet are personal jet packs and they were in shows before Star Trek.....Lost in Space was the show that I am talking about. They always flew over the terrain in that show. I also want to see that device that Dr. McCoy had that scanned the body and healed or cured things that were not right. It was a hand held device that he put on the patience forehead.
I do think that the testube baby was really science fiction and now we have one and the same goes with cloning.
As far as writers, my favorites are Larry Niven, Asimov and Heinlein (sp). I also like some other young adult books that are in the scifi range like Madelien D'lengle, A Wrinkle In Time and the series in that one and also love, love, love The Chronicles of Narnia.

 

I used to read a lot of science fiction, my favourite writers were Ray Bradbury, Arthur C Clarke and John Wyndham and others I can't recall.
I guess like @Shirley Martin I am more drawn to the fantasy and imagination, aspect than pure science or spacecraft etc. I felt than Star Trek had lots of messages and metaphors amongst all the space travel and gadgets though.

 

You are, then, a disbeliever, as such? Frank

 

I am with you totally on that!