Here are 3 examples of science fiction books that really did predict the future, according to Reuben Westmaas from curiosity.com… Support our news coverage by subscribing to our Kindle Nation Daily Digest. Joining is free right now!

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“1984” by George Orwell (1949): Big Brother (2000s)

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Visions of the future aren’t always very cheerful — but neither is the future. In “1984,” the main characters are always working under the watchful eye of “Big Brother,” the ominously fraternal nickname given for the oppressive ruling regime. Besides being the name of one of the most popular reality shows of the past two decades, “Big Brother” has become decidedly more real in England, where video surveillance is nearly inescapable.

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“Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley (1932): Psychiatric Drugs (1950s)

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While “1984” predicted a future where the government strictly controlled the information that people were able to access, the 1932 novel “Brave New World” suggested that it would be easier to discourage people from pursuing that information in the first place. One of the tools in that particular dystopia’s toolkit was the mood-altering medication “Soma,” a psychiatric drug imagined before the first psychiatric drugs were ever developed. But it’s probably safe to say that psychiatric medicine wasn’t exactly the disaster that Huxley feared.

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“Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley (1818): Organ Transplants (1954)

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No, doctors still haven’t found a way to spit in the eye of the circle of life, but one of the achievements advanced by the hubristic doctor of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” has certainly come to pass: the ability to keep an organ alive outside of the body in order to be transplanted into a new host. In 1954, doctors performed the very first organ transplant: a kidney. Fortunately, most of those doctors aren’t going to end up fleeing to the Arctic to escape their handiwork.

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Read full list on Curiosity.com