Fictional references that became true

[Polycarp]

Well:

The Beach Boys’ song “Kokomo” has nothing to do with the Indiana city, but rather describes a fictional spot in the Florida Keys. (Some maps show Sandals Cay as Kokomo Island, which may have been the song’s inspiration.) However, the owners of a resort and tiki bar on Islamorada Key renamed it to capitalize on the song’s popularity; some reports suggest that one of the Beach Boys knew the bar by that name, and used it for the song. AFAICT, though, it was a case of life consciously imitating art, for publicity.

Heinlein’s technique of extrapolating trends to their logical future outcomes gave him a huge number of prediction “hits”. In addition to “Waldo”, mentioned above, his early short stories include “Let There Be Light”, which focuses on solar power, “The Roads Must Roll,” in which the prediction is made that with greater mobility, the cores of cities would decline as the towns grew towards each other along their interconnections, and “Blowups Haopen,” about the values, dangers, and NIMBY syndrome associated with atomic power – written before any of them were common public knowledge. Other details escape people, though, such as the macho boys wearing earrings in Starship Troopers – thought highly effiminate in 1960 when the story came out, but long since socially acceptable.

Probably Heinlein’s two most interesting predictions, though, were not technological. “Situation Unsatisfactory” shows the U.S. as the sole superpower left in the world, and the universal hatred of the man in control of the U.S. gvernment as a result. An Stranger in a Strange Land, his 1960 tour de force in exploring what happens when 1940s-50s American taboos are broken, has two eerie details: The chief executive who runs the government is guided by his wife, who consults an astrologer for her own advice; and one charactr is made to remark “Whatever happened to Agnew?”

Finally, I think it’s fairly well known that the “Velociraptors” of the movie Jurassic Park were scaled up from the actual genus Velociraptor, which is only the size of a large dog – not adequately menacing for the movie. Shortly after the movie came out, John Horner, the real-life model for paleontologist character Alan Grant, discovered a Velociraptor relative which he named Utahraptor – which matched the movie’s 'raptors to a Tee.

[ElvisL1ves]

@mobo85

The same company that markets Brawndo also markets Tru Blood and Sex Panther cologne. That company’s name? Omni Consumer Products Corporation.

It’s about time Acme Products started selling anvils and rocket-powered roller skates …

[Ximenean]

More science fiction - “robot” of course originated in Karel Čapek’s play Rossum’s Universal Robots from the Czech word robota meaning “work”, and “android” was popularised in a 19th century French novel.

[E-Sabbath]

Two drummers so far have died in bizarre gardening accidents. Abba’s died in a fall from a conservatory, and… was it Kansas’ that had an allergic reaction to pesticide?

Metallica put out an album with a very black cover with (almost) nothing else on it, not even the name.
And, of course, everything goes to 11 these days.

[Annie-Xmas]

On SEinfeld, Elaine mentioning that a guy having the same name as a murderer change his name to OJ.

Aiired 7 months before the Brown-Goldman murders.

[Ximenean]

@E-Sabbath

And, of course, everything goes to 11 these days.

Including, amusingly, the volume control on the BBC’s web TV service, iPlayer.

[CalMeacham]

More science fiction - “robot” of course originated in Karel Čapek’s play Rossum’s Universal Robots from the Czech word robota meaning “work”, and “android” was popularised in a 19th century French novel.

Capek’s “robots” were evidently biological animata, not metal constructions as we have come to associate with the word. They were what was for a long time called “androids” in science fiction. But ever since Star Wars called R2D2 and C3PO “Droids” (Suggested, I’ve always felt, by the robotic “Drones” of Silent Running), the term “Android” seems to be creeping to mean metal automata.

On stage, of course, Capek’s Robots were played by people. And I’ll bet they didn’t wear metallic costumes or use metal makeup. I’ve read the play several times, and the implication is pretty clear that they’re biological. So the word has changed meaning in an odd and interesting way.

[Chronos]

Otis Day and the Knights, the band created for the movie Animal House, was created as a real band that’s been around for a few decades now. IIRC, the guy played Otis Day {DeWayne Jessie) fronted (and I think still does)

Whoa, the band was created for the movie? I never realized! When I saw the movie, I just thought the Delta guys were so hip, they were able to hire a nationally-known band to play for their parties.

Cal, do you have a cite for “android” originally referring to biological constructs? I had always understood that it was just a robot who looked like a man (whether just in shape, like C3PO, or in full appearance, like R. Daneel Olivaw), regardless of what they had in their innards.

[CalMeacham]

Cal, do you have a cite for “android” originally referring to biological constructs? I had always understood that it was just a robot who looked like a man (whether just in shape, like C3PO, or in full appearance, like R. Daneel Olivaw), regardless of what they had in their innards.

Not offhand. But in the comics I read in the 1960s and the SF I read in the 1960s and 1970s that was the clear implication. I didn’t hear "android’ referring to nuts-and-bolts mechanical things until the past couple of decades. Have a look at Nicholls’ Science Fiction Encyclopedia or Clute and Nicholls’ Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. My copies are at home, but I’ll check tonight.

[CalMeacham]

Another one – Robert Heinlein’s **Stranger in a Stranger land has Valentine Michael Smith founding “The Church of All Worlds” (which later "re-incarnates under other names). A group of admirers in California really did start up a “Church of All Worlds”. Aside from a year-long hiatus, it has been in existence all that time:

Church of All Worlds

Heinlein didn’t want anything to do with this bunch, but I understand he paid for a subscription to their journal, “Green Egg”, because he didn’t want to be in any sort of psychic debt to them by receiving a free one. And I suspect he wanted to see what they were up to.

[An_Gadai]

I’ve never bothered buying Duff beer but you can purchase it in my local offy.

[Fair_Rarity]

ThinkGeek made a tauntaun sleeping bag as an April Fools’ joke and the demand was so great they actually make and sell them now.

[elfkin477]

In a Lone Gunmen episode called “Tango de los Pistoleros” the guys keep a hijacked airliner from smashing into the World Trade Center. The episode aired April 27th, 2001

[Lamia]

@E-Sabbath

Two drummers so far have died in bizarre gardening accidents. Abba’s died in a fall from a conservatory, and… was it Kansas’ that had an allergic reaction to pesticide?

Metallica put out an album with a very black cover with (almost) nothing else on it, not even the name.

And, of course, everything goes to 11 these days.

I think Spinal Tap itself counts. The band was fictional at the time This is Spinal Tap was made, but since then Spinal Tap has released three albums and staged several tours. And unlike many of the examples mentioned already this is not a case of people who had nothing to do with the original fictional work borrowing a name from that work. Spinal Tap is made up of the same actors who played the fictional musicians in the movie, and these same actors wrote and perform Spinal Tap’s songs (including the songs from the movie) themselves.

[E-Sabbath]

Headline: Princess Diana Dead!

… cover to a Wonder Woman comic that came out about a week before Princess Di died.

[CalMeacham]

Cal, do you have a cite for “android” originally referring to biological constructs? I had always understood that it was just a robot who looked like a man (whether just in shape, like C3PO, or in full appearance, like R. Daneel Olivaw), regardless of what they had in their innards.

From the first The Science Fiction Encyclopedia, edited by Peter nicholls (1979), entry on Androida written by Brian Stableford (p 33):

…In contemporary usage, however, “android” usually denotes an artificial man of organic substance, although it has occasionally been used with reference to man-like machines…The first clear distinction within genre sf between android and robot was probably that made by Edmond Hamilton in his Captain Future series, where Captain Future’s sidekicks were a robot, an android, and a brain in a box. Had it not been for this series, “android” would probably have retained much of the ambiguity between organic and inorganic. Henry Kuttner used it to refer to a metal contraption in the 1940s, and A.E. van Vogt used “robot” to apply to artificial organic men at around the same time, but these transgressions were exceptional.

The article goes on to detail the history of artificial people, noting that androids as artificial organic people tended to be viewed more sympathetically than metal robots, and began appearing in the 1940s, apparently under the name “android” in works by Clifford D. imak, Robert Silverburg, Wiliam Tenn, John Brunner, Brian Stableford (self-reference!), and Kathleen Sky.

I’ll also note that Edward Hamilton wriote for DC comics into the 1960s, and was probably ultimately responsible for the use of “android = artificial organic person” that I grew up with.

The updated The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, edited by John Clute and Peter Nicholls (1993, 1995), which is Less Fun because they took out all the pictures, has a slightly updated article, also by Stableford. It mentions more works 9and, of course, works between 1979 and 1995), noting Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. This was, of course, turned into the movie Bladerunner, and featured artificial organic people (even though, ironically, Dick often used “android” for metal robots).

[Red_Skeezix]

Continuing on robots: The term robotics was first recorded in a Liar! a fictional story by Issac Asimov.

[jackdavinci]

The new Google Wave is named after the tech from Firefly/Serenity, and involved some other references as well.

[Ferret_Herder]

@Ruby Sees

Dean Koontz references a fictional “Book of Counted Sorrows” in his novels often. Demand for a real one was so great that he’s supposedly working on it.

The Wiki page says it was already released back in 2003. It says there’s a new edition available via his website. Edit: Book link

[Robot_Arm]

@CalMeacham

A parallel case might be Heinlein’s “waldoes”, named after the titular character in “Waldo” – they were mechanical arms used for manipulating dangerous or very small items. but i have to admit that, after someone challenged the issue here on the Board, I’ve never seen the term used in R&D or in industry, although at least three science fiction authors have used the term.

It shows up in other places, too.