11 Scientific Breakthroughs Inspired by Sci-Fi Literature

Inspiration can emerge from the most unexpected places, and sometimes it strikes out of nowhere—like the legendary moment when Archimedes supposedly shouted 'Eureka! Eureka!' in the bath, realizing that irregular objects could be measured by their displacement of water. But on occasion, it's fiction, rather than reality, that lights the spark of innovation. Sci-fi narratives, for instance, have not only predicted technological leaps but have directly sparked scientific progress, from robotics to space exploration and beyond. Here are 11 technological advancements inspired by science fiction stories to explore while we await teleportation beyond the quantum level.

1. The Taser // Victor Appleton’s Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle

Published in 1911 under a pen name by the Stratemeyer Syndicate (famous for publishing the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys series), Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle features the title character inventing a seemingly normal rifle that actually fires electrical bolts. The book became a childhood favorite of Jack Cover and partly fueled the inspiration for his development of the electroshock weapon: The Taser.

Cover, an aerospace expert, started working on the device in the late 1960s due to concerns that if sky marshals fired a gun on a plane, it could puncture the fuselage or damage critical equipment. His goal was to create a non-lethal weapon (though it is more accurately referred to as 'less-lethal'), and the idea came to him when he read about a man who was temporarily paralyzed after accidentally walking into an electric fence. By 1974, Cover had developed his version of Tom Swift’s fictional electric rifle—and as a tribute to Swift, he named the device TASER, an acronym for 'Thomas A. Swift’s Electric Rifle.' (He added the A to make it easier to pronounce.)

2. Helicopters // Jules Verne’s Robur the Conqueror

As a young boy, Igor Sikorsky encountered a Russian translation of Jules Verne’s 1886 novel Robur the Conqueror, also known as The Clipper of the Clouds, and it ignited his imagination. Sikorsky not only had Verne’s vision of the helicopter, the Albatross, to fuel his passion, but also the illustrations by Leon Bennett, who worked from Verne’s own sketches of the flying machine.

Sikorsky tested his initial helicopter design in 1909 but couldn’t get it airborne; after another failed attempt in 1910, he shifted his focus to airplanes. Three decades later, he returned to the helicopter concept, now equipped with years of aviation experience. Sikorsky filed a patent for his helicopter design in 1931, although other experimental helicopters had been flown prior to his test—the first being Louis Bréguet’s Gyroplane Laboratoire in 1935 [PDF]. These early helicopters employed multiple main rotors, but Sikorsky’s design, which included a single main rotor on the body and a smaller tail rotor to counteract torque, was revolutionary (or rather, sky-shattering).

In 1939, Sikorsky achieved a successful tethered test flight with the VS-300, the prototype of the first practical helicopter—a significant flight that lasted only a few seconds. (An untethered flight followed in 1940, after which hundreds of additional test flights were conducted.) By 1942, Sikorsky had developed the first mass-produced helicopter, the XR-4, and his rotor design remains the standard for most helicopters today.

3. The World Wide Web // Arthur C. Clarke’s “Dial F for Frankenstein”

Without Arthur C. Clarke’s 1960s short story 'Dial F for Frankenstein,' the World Wide Web as we know it might not exist. The story revolves around a global telephone network that gains awareness—and it became one of Tim Berners-Lee’s inspirations when he developed the Web while at CERN in the 1980s. In a 2002 Internet Society interview (above), Clarke acknowledged the influence his story had on Berners-Lee, saying, 'I guess I’m the godfather of the World Wide Web.' Fortunately, Berners-Lee’s invention hasn’t developed a mind of its own and taken over the world as in Clarke’s tale… at least, not yet.

4. Humanoid Robots // Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy

Tomotaka Takahashi is a leading scientist in the field of humanoid robots, and his journey began with Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy. This manga series, which ran from 1952 to 1968, follows the adventures of an android, Astro Boy, created by Dr. Umataro Tenma. 'When I was 4 or 5 years old, I read a comic book of Astro Boy and that was the beginning,' Takahashi shared in an interview. He was especially inspired by 'the description of how scientists build the robot,' which motivated him to pursue robotics and become a robot scientist.

Astro Boy has also directly influenced Takahashi’s designs—most notably in Kirobo, a 13-inch tall robot companion created for astronaut Koichi Wakata during his work aboard the International Space Station. Kirobo shares the same color scheme as Astro Boy, including the iconic red boots, and is crafted to appear equally adorable and approachable.

5. Liquid-Fueled Rockets // H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds

Robert H. Goddard, regarded as the father of rocketry, credited his early fascination with space travel to his reading of H.G. Wells’s 1898 novel The War of the Worlds when he was just 16. In 1926, Goddard launched the first liquid-fueled rocket, marking a pivotal moment in space exploration history. Six years later, he wrote a letter [PDF] to Wells, expressing how the novel had deeply influenced him: 'I decided that what might conservatively be called ‘high altitude research’ was the most fascinating problem in existence. The spell did not break, and I took up physics,' he wrote, adding, 'how many more years I shall be able to work on the problem I do not know; I hope, as long as I live. There can be no thought of finishing, for ‘aiming at the stars,’ both literally and figuratively, is a problem to occupy generations.' Goddard’s theoretical and engineering contributions laid the groundwork for scientists at the dawn of the Space Age.

6. Transparent Human Cells // H.G. Wells’s The Invisible Man

Although scientists have yet to unlock the secret to making humans invisible, progress is being made, much of it inspired by H.G. Wells’s 1897 classic, The Invisible Man, in which a scientist renders himself invisible by crafting chemicals that adjust his skin's refractive index to align with the surrounding environment.

Alon Gorodetsky, an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at UC Irvine, is one of the leading figures investigating human invisibility. Gorodetsky admits that his passion for the project was sparked by the science fiction he loved as a child—'those fascinating ideas that H.G. Wells was pondering over 120 years ago.'

In a 2020 paper published in Nature Communications, Gorodetsky and his team described how they used a protein from the opalescent inshore squid—famous for its ability to adapt its color to blend into various environments—to make human kidney cells almost entirely transparent. Gorodetsky believes this is just the beginning, with his ultimate goal being to 'develop human skin that can alter its transparency, similar to squid skin.'

7. Investigating the Habitability of Mars // Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man

Physicist Peter H. Smith, emeritus professor at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, credits his early fascination with extraterrestrial realms to the science fiction works of Ray Bradbury, particularly The Martian Chronicles (1950) and The Illustrated Man (1951). In a foreword to the collection Orbiting Ray Bradbury’s Mars (2013), Smith shared that 'as a child, I could feel his arm around my shoulder leading me into alien landscapes never imagined.'

Driven by his childhood fascination, Smith sought to explore these alien worlds. He designed cameras for the Sojourner Rover, which was a part of the Pathfinder mission that successfully landed on Mars in 1997. In line with the astronauts in Bradbury’s stories who investigated the habitability of Mars, Smith also served as the principal investigator for the 2008 Phoenix mission, which deployed an uncrewed probe to explore Mars’ water history and its potential to sustain life.

8. Invisible Material // Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell

Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell manga series, first published between 1981 and 1991, introduces a technology called thermoptic camouflage, which grants near-invisibility to its users. Masahiko Inami, a professor at the University of Tokyo, encountered the manga while pursuing his Ph.D. and reflected that it made him realize, 'although it may not be possible to physically render objects invisible, from an engineering standpoint, it might be feasible to make them visually disappear by integrating them into their surroundings with three-dimensional imagery.'

Inami first unveiled his optical camouflage technology in 1999, which works by projecting real-time three-dimensional images onto retroreflective surfaces. While it hasn’t yet reached the level of science fiction, Inami spoke about its practical applications in 2020. Beyond its potential as an invisibility cloak similar to those in Ghost in the Shell, he envisions the technology could minimize blind spots in vehicles by making 'car interiors such as pillars … transparent' and even aid in 'medical diagnosis and surgeries.'

Inami isn’t the sole researcher working on reflective camouflage: Susumu Tachi from the University of Tokyo has developed a comparable material, known as 'retro-reflective project' (RPT) technology. Meanwhile, researchers at the University of California San Diego are creating materials to cloak drones, and scientists at the University of California Berkeley are exploring nanotechnology to hide even larger objects, such as airplanes.

9. The Atomic Bomb // H.G. Wells’s The World Set Free

In H.G. Wells’s 1914 novel The World Set Free, he envisioned a devastating weapon—what he called an atomic bomb—that was compact enough to be dropped from aircraft and capable of 'continuing to explode indefinitely.' Not only did his novel predict the atomic bomb, it also inspired physicist Leo Szilard to contribute to its creation. Szilard came across The World Set Free in 1932 and later admitted that it 'made a very great impression on me, but I didn’t regard it as anything but fiction.' Despite this, the concept stuck with him.

In 1933, while living in London’s Bloomsbury neighborhood, Szilard—who had fled Germany after Hitler’s rise to power—read in The Times that physicist Ernest Rutherford dismissed the possibility of harnessing atomic energy. Szilard recalled, “This sort of set me pondering as I was walking the streets of London.” It was during this walk that inspiration struck, and Szilard theorized the nuclear chain reaction that would transform Wells’s fictional bomb into a reality. Intriguingly, Wells’s novel also seems to have predicted the year and place of this breakthrough, with his character Holsten unlocking atomic energy in 1933 while living in Bloomsbury.

Szilard later played a crucial role in the creation of the atomic bomb through his work on the Manhattan Project. In 1954, he acknowledged Wells’s influence, calling him the true father of the bomb. He famously said that The World Set Free 'made clear to me what the liberation of atomic energy on a large scale would mean.'

10. Modern Submarines // Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

In 1867, Jules Verne visited the Exposition Universelle and encountered a model of the Plongeur, the first submarine powered by mechanical means—specifically, a compressed-air engine—rather than human effort. Two years later, Verne began serializing Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea in Magasin d'Éducation et de Récréation, which featured an even more sophisticated submarine, the Nautilus.

At the age of 14, Simon Lake was captivated by Captain Nemo’s Nautilus after reading Verne’s novel. By the time he was 27, in 1894, he had developed and launched the Argonaut Junior, the first of many submarines throughout his naval engineering career. His innovations, including ballast tanks for stability and diving planes for better control during submerging and surfacing—both features inspired by the Nautilus—were key contributions to the evolution of submarine technology.

11. Remote Manipulators // Robert Heinlein’s “Waldo”

In Robert Heinlein’s short story “Waldo,” published under the pseudonym Anson MacDonald, a scientist named Waldo Farthingwaite-Jones invents a device to assist with his degenerative muscle disease. The machine mimics his hand movements with greater strength and at a distance. This device, essentially a remote manipulator or telefactor, is referred to as a 'waldo' by some, following Heinlein’s story. As described in Fundamentals of Robot Mechanics, this mechanism 'usher[ed] in the era of teleoperators.'

The development of remote manipulators took place across various fields, including the nuclear industry. John Payne, a scientist at the General Electric Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, and Raymond Goertz, an engineer at Argonne National Laboratory, led research teams funded by the United States Atomic Energy Commission. Their mission was to create devices capable of handling radioactive materials. In 1948, Payne filed for a patent for the first such device, just six years after the release of “Waldo.” Goertz followed suit with his version the next year. Today, 'waldos' are used not only in nuclear environments but also in space, in surgical operating rooms, and by puppeteers.