Absurd Science Fiction Becomes Real Moments

When I was a kid, Warhammer40000 was what it was, an absurd science fiction parody of over the top military SF tropes intended to entertain nerds with the prospect of exciting plastic and metal painted warfare with dice.

I did not expect the US Military to outright steal ideas from Codex: Tau, in particular the whole Drones thing where Drones could be sent out into the battlefield to blow up or otherwise shoot with guns targets you wouldn't risk actual troops trying to take down.

Considering Games Workshop sued for control of the concept of the Space Marine, I think it's high time we admitted as an internet that the USA Military owes them money for ripping off Codex Tau's Army List.

This isn't even the most egregious example these days, I swear the news is the best science fiction on television right now.

What.

That sounds kind of a vague example. I doubt WH 40 K invented the concept of unmanned military drones.

It's weird to me how out of all the Warhammer 40,000 Codexes, Codex Tau was Nostradamus.

A really good guide for making jam? :o

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV's) have been around for about 70 years. One of the first was the F 6 K Hellcat converted from the original (manned) piston engine carrier fighter of World War II. They used a bunch of those for target practice developing things like the AIM-9 Sidewinder missile.

Vietnam had several models of UAV for recon. Iraqi troops in 1991 famously surrendered to a scout UAV launched from the battleship USS Wisconsin.

edited 21st Jun '13 5:27:04 PM by MajorTom

There you go. So I don't see the point of the OP. Also I can't get over how hilariously incongruous your avatar is, man. It cracks me up

First experiments with unmanned and remotely piloted aircraft for military purposes were made as early as the First World War.

edited 21st Jun '13 5:46:11 PM by Catfish42

That's not to say there haven't been moments when sci-fi has become real, though.

Star Trek basically invented flip phones.

If it was not the US military who started using them, I can imagine GW suing people who are using drones, regardless of whether they actually invented them or not.

You can only keep patents/copyright and you can defend in court, and you can only defend in court if you have more money than the other dude.

Complete face transplants. Remember when Face/Off came out and all the "experts" said that it was impossible and the film makers should have been ashamed of themselves for even coming up with the idea?

Now we have them being performed yearly, the success rate is rising and the quality of the finished work is getting better. Who knows, we may eventually see them succeeding in outdoing the work of the fictional surgeons in the film.

I've heard talk about head transplants.

Well, when I was a kid, the concept of video phones seemed cool but absurd. Now we have Skype.

But I will forever be convinced that the idea for Skype came from the Pokemon anime, no matter whether or not actual video phones existed before or after.

Not just talk, the did it(successfully) on a monkey a while back.

A long while back.

I forget what they are called, but the things that make up cells walls and, assuming no more hiccups, in combination with progress in stem cells and gene therapy will give the first person a "youth reset" in about 5 generations. For like a shit ton of cash, but still, progress!

They figured out a way to encode data in DNA. Now that is some crazy shit if I do say so myself.

That's not really too surprising.

That is pretty fucking cool.

A head transplant on a monkey, eh? Impressive, but when they can successfully graft a cat's head onto a human body and make it work, I can die happy.

Encoding data in DNA? Why is it that the first thing my mind jumps to is the many ways that could be used for wrongdoings?

The tech is mostly useless, as the only way to copy dna tends to randomly insert junk code.

All technological discoveries were Sci Fi for a time, from rocketships, to submarines, from cell phones, to waterbeds.

So does that mean if I live long enough eventually I'll get to see plasma rifles, lightsabers, starfighters, faster than light travel, Gundams, and deflector shields?

I have to say, my favourite example of this is definitely 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.