Why science fiction is important for scientific advancement

    I hope you know Jules Verne. The author of "20000 leagues under the sea", "From earth to the moon" and "Around the world in 80 days". He was a French author of 19th century , who wrote about a ship called Nautilus in his novel “20000 leagues under the sea”. Nautilus was a version of modern day submarine. In “From earth to the moon” he wrote about the journey to the moon. Who doesn't know about Star Trek ? The adventures of Captain Kirk. We saw many fictional things in Star Trek, like video calling, mobile phone, Starship Enterprise, teleportation etc. So what is common in all these things ? They were all science fiction of their time. When Jules Verne wrote those novels nobody ever imagined about submarine or going to the moon. When Star Trek first released, the mobile phone and video calling were fiction. Though Starship Enterprise is still a fiction and teleportation is imaginary thing but we can see International Space Station which is orbiting earth. So we may get our Starship Enterprise in near future.

Starship Enterpirse

Now why I'm giving the science fiction so importance ? Cause these fictions are the first pillars of invention of those fictional things. I'm not saying they have directly impact on those inventions but those fictions inspired the future scientists to invent those things. There is no doubt about it. They ideas were supplied to science . The ideas which were born through authors’ imagination. Sometimes those ideas ignited the rush for those fictional things.

The union

Now we must not mix fantasy with fiction. Some ideas or tings are total fantasy. Like dragon, mermaid etc. Those things never existed or are misinterpretation of something else. Dinosaur bones were treated as dragon bones in the past. Sighting of sea cows or elephant seal was misunderstood as mermaid. There is a thin line between fantasy and fiction. Fantasy is unachievable through science but science fiction has some truth in it or based on science in most cases. So it may be achieved depends on the advancement of our scientific knowledge and technology.

We can divide sci-fi in three categories.

1.      Fiction of past, realty of present :         In this category we can put Submarine, Aeroplane, Helicopter, Mobile Phone, Video calling etc. These things were fiction when the authors wrote about them but in modern days these are reality.

2.     Fiction of present, reality of near future :         In this category we can put Human colony on other planets, Human evolution through artificial intelligence or in simple word Cyborg, Self aware  self sufficient AI (Now this one can be bad. Just can’t ignore the thought of “Terminator”).

3.     Fiction of present, reality of future is questionable :         In this category we can put time travel, Travelling to another star system (This one can be possible but with our modern technology “No go”), Encounter with alien intelligent life (The distance between two star systems is so vast it is really problematic for them to visit us and existence of wormhole is still in theory) etc.

So, I think science fiction has played and will  play an important role in scientific development  of our species. This is my personal opinion. A common man’s opinion with ordinary brain and ordinary IQ. What is your opinion ?