Tech from Sci-Fi Movies That You Actually Can Buy Today

We are well into the 21^st century. Where are our hoverboards? Where are the teleporters? Where the Sith is my lightsaber? It’s easy to convince yourself that we live in a dumb future with no cool Sci-Fi tech to speak of. Well, au contraire mes frères et soeurs, you must remember that it’s only Sci-Fi until it’s Sci-FA . . . Sci-NONFI . . . reality.

Let’s take a look at some cool stuff you can buy today that started as the dreams of people who dreamt of androids who may (or may not) have dreamt of electric sheep.

Video Phone – Metropolis

The pandemic taught us that not every future is as bright and gleaming as 2015 Hill Valley. Some futures mean spending lots of time away from everyone else with our only window to the world being a screen. But a person can only play so much Animal Crossing or watch so much Tiger King. If you wanted to socialize or get any collaborative work done, you needed to video chat.

Not that long ago, video chat was a painfully slow and grainy experience, and not long before that, it was still the stuff of Hollywood storytelling. Sci-Fi literature has made reference to forms of video calling for a long time, but its most notable appearance was in the first great science fiction film, 1927’s Metropolis.

This cinematic marvel predicted the future of communication fairly accurately, though it missed the mark on the future of sexy dancing by a wide margin.

Now the ability to video chat is a common feature in laptops and is even built into some monitors and TVs.

Or you could always get a Webcam

Seashells – Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury is a titan of science fiction, so it’s no wonder that he’s made several contributions to the list of real tech that started as fantasy. But perhaps none are as present in our day-to-day lives as earbuds, or as he called them in Fahrenheit 451, “Seashells.”

“And in her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk coming in, coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind. The room was indeed empty. Every night the waves came in and bore her off on their great tides of sound, floating her, wide-eyed, toward morning. There had been no night in the last two years that Mildred had not swum that sea, had not gladly gone down in it for the third time.”

― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

These little wonders open “an electronic ocean of sound . . . coming in on the shore” of your mind. That’s pretty Sci-Fi! Not to mention many can actively cancel out external noise, or act as a speaker when paired with a device like your phone.

See our Wireless Headphones Buying Guide

Speaking of phones . . .

Communicators – Star Trek

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Or the supercomputer in our pockets. Smart phones have to be one of the most pivotal inventions since the internet or deodorant. And a Sci-Fi gadget this ubiquitous could only have been predicted within the sublimely melodramatic confines of Star Trek.

A smart phone can put you in touch with almost anyone on the planet, at any time, much like a Star Trek communicator. But that’s hardly it. The list of things a smartphone can’t do is shrinking every day, and now that most phones can search the internet based on an image or translate written language in real-time, the only thing setting them apart from a tricorder is the lack of an Android X-Ray, or Apple MRI app.

Newspads – 2001: A Space Odyssey

“2001, A Space Odyssey” by Per Olof Forsberg is licensed under CC BY 2.0

This one is actually kinda crazy. If you go back and watch Stanley Kubrick’s iconic Sci-Fi thriller 2001: A Space Odyssey you may not even blink as you see the astronauts check the BBC for the latest news on their tablets- I mean “newspads.”

Then you remember that this cinematic pillar was filmed in 1968! Then you remember that there wouldn’t have been tablets available even if 2001 had been filmed in 2001.

Then you feel old.

There’s nothing fictional about our selection of Tablets

Robots – Rossum’s Universal Robots

“Rossum’s Universal Robots” by Shed On The Moon is marked with CC PDM 1.0

Long before Lieutenant Commander Data took the bridge, Johnny-5 came alive, or R2 and 3P0 went on their misadventure, there was a story about a factory that produced robots, and then eventually, love. And then eventually violence.

Rossums Universal Robots is a 1920 science fiction play by the Czech writer Karel Čapek that is the literal origin of the word robot. Considering that most robots we meet in our day to day are busy vacuuming our floors, it’s funny, alarming, and not that surprising to consider the very first story about robots ends (Spoiler alert) with them revolting against us and taking over the world.

Which reminds me of another Sci-Fi masterpiece.

Get your Robot Vacuum Cleaner before the inevitable robot uprising

Mail Drones – In the Deep of Time

 

Terminator 2: Judgement Day may be a perfect Sci-Fi action film, and it may be the first time many of us saw giant flying robots that somewhat resemble the multi-prop drones of today. Rad as it may be, T2 is not the first instance of drones in the zeitgeist.

Their origins actually reach back to someone we tend to associate more with science reality than science fiction. Thomas Edison.

See the Wizard of Menlo Park was many things but it turns out a Sci-Fi author isn’t really one of them. He agreed to write with a partner who begged Edison to produce the pages that he had promised, but to no avail. After years of aggravation Edison’s collaborator, George Parsons Lathrop, cobbled what had been written into a short story called In the Deep of Time (which you can read here p.679).

In it there are many technological wonders but among them are small flying machines that carry mail and packages two and fro, night and day. A reality that hasn’t fully come true today, but is certainly a possibility on the horizon! Which, I guess the T-1000 / Skynet is online / Hunter-Killer drone future is as well so, here’s hoping for mail drones.

In the meantime you can live out your Sci-Fi Star Wars dog fight dreams when you pilot these RC Quadcopters.

Or experience the freedom of flight with our entire selection of Drones

Science fiction is as inextricable from technology as imagination is to invention itself. Our ability to imagine something that doesn’t yet exist is the first step toward making it a reality What I’m saying is, no matter how bad of an idea it may be, you will probably be able to buy a flying car in the next twenty years.