20 Vintage Visions Of The Future That Have Turned Out To Be Remarkably Accurate

For many of us, fictitious novels and fantasy movies give us a chance to escape from reality. But audiences in the past got more than just a bit of entertainment from their favorite books and films – they got a real-life glimpse into the future. It turns out that some of our most commonly used pieces of technology, as well as particular events in history, were predicted before they even became reality. Here are 20 of the most surprising retro visions of the future that have come true.

20. Self-Driving Cars

Ray Bradbury’s writing can be classed as a blend of fantasy and horror, and he had many dark visions of the future. In 1951 he wrote one such short story, “The Pedestrian.” In it, a man goes out for a walk, which seems innocent enough. But in Bradbury’s mind, leaving home might be illegal in the year 2053. So the protagonist gets caught by a police car – but it’s no ordinary automobile.

Not Quite There Yet

Instead, Bradbury envisioned a self-driving, autonomous police car. The vehicle catches up to the protagonist, arrests him and carts him away to a mental health facility. Our self-driving vehicles don’t – yet – have the ability to think for themselves, but, to be fair, they’ve been developed over the decades after Bradbury’s initial vision. For instance, Google got the green light in 2012 to test its self-driving vehicles in Nevada, so long as two people went along for the ride.

19. Transplants

Mary Shelley published The Modern Prometheus, also known as Frankenstein, in 1818. Her story took a page from her contemporaries in the medical field. They, too, had begun to wonder if electricity could be used to bring dead tissue back to life. But Shelley took it one step further in her famous novel – and predicted the future in doing so.

Remote Surgery

Specifically, Shelley wrote about a then-fictional procedure in which a doctor would transfer organs from one body to another before stitching up the patient and sending them on their merry way. A century later, this vision became a reality, when medical professionals began to perform transplants – without creating monsters in the process.