Trend Intelligence · IdeaCrawl
Science Fiction Accuracy Report
Which predictions came true, who saw furthest, and what's still waiting to happen — plotted from the year imagined to today, filterable by category, decade, source and stage.
Prediction Timeline
Every sci-fi concept with verified, real-world commercial progress — line runs from the year imagined to today.
| Work | Predicted Concepts |
|---|---|
|
The Incredible Hulk (1978 TV series) 1977 |
|
|
Blade Runner 1982 |
|
|
ALF (TV series) 1986 |
|
|
Ghost in the Shell 1995 |
|
|
Her 2013 |
|
|
Limitless (TV series) 2015 |
|
|
Demonic (2021 film) 2021 |
|
|
Black Widow (2021 film) 2021 |
|
|
Eternals (film) 2021 |
|
|
Ron's Gone Wrong 2021 |
|
|
Space Jam: A New Legacy 2021 |
|
|
Don't Look Up 2021 |
|
|
The Suicide Squad (film) 2021 |
|
|
Belle (2021 film) 2021 |
|
|
In the Earth 2021 |
|
|
Outside the Wire 2021 |
|
|
Ghostbusters: Afterlife 2021 |
|
|
Dune (2021 film) 2021 |
|
|
After Yang 2021 |
|
|
Infinite (film) 2021 |
|
|
The Mitchells vs. the Machines 2021 |
|
|
Finch (film) 2021 |
|
|
Godzilla vs. Kong 2021 |
|
|
Voyagers (film) 2021 |
|
|
Stowaway (2021 film) 2021 |
|
|
Chaos Walking (film) 2021 |
|
|
Free Guy 2021 |
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|
The Tomorrow War 2021 |
|
|
Reminiscence (2021 film) 2021 |
|
Visionary Leaderboard
Ranked by Visionary Score - a blend of how far the prediction has actually progressed commercially, how many years ago it was made, and how widely the work was seen.
🥇
Blade Runner
1982
85/100
🥈
ALF (TV series)
1986
84/100
🥉
The Incredible Hulk (1978 TV series)
1977
83/100
| # | Work | Year | Visionary Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |
|
1982 |
|
| 2 |
|
1986 |
|
| 3 |
The Incredible Hulk (1978 TV series)
|
1977 |
|
| 4 |
|
1995 |
|
| 5 |
Her
|
2013 |
|
| 6 |
|
2021 |
|
| 7 |
|
2021 |
|
| 8 |
|
2021 |
|
| 9 |
|
2021 |
|
| 10 |
|
2021 |
|
| 11 |
|
2021 |
|
| 12 |
|
2021 |
|
| 13 |
|
2021 |
|
| 14 |
|
2021 |
|
| 15 |
|
2021 |
|
| 16 |
|
2021 |
|
| 17 |
|
2021 |
|
| 18 |
|
2021 |
|
| 19 |
|
2021 |
|
| 20 |
|
2021 |
|
Most Surprising Predictions
Hand-picked by our editors, refreshed quarterly.
-
Star Trek: The Original Series
Handheld wireless communicators
Flip phones and modern smartphones closely mirror the show's communicator design decades later.
-
2001: A Space Odyssey
Flat, handheld tablet computers used for reading news
Tablet devices became mainstream consumer electronics roughly four decades after the film.
-
Neuromancer
A globally networked "cyberspace" people jack into
The commercial internet and immersive online spaces emerged within a decade of the novel.
-
Minority Report
Gesture-based computer interfaces
Multi-touch and motion-sensing interfaces (smartphones, motion controllers) followed within years.
-
Fahrenheit 451
Tiny in-ear wireless listening devices
Wireless earbuds became a mainstream consumer product category decades later.
Predictions Still Waiting
Concepts with no verified real-world commercial progress yet - ranked by cultural reach, so the most widely-seen unrealized predictions surface first.
-
Mind-Mesh Collective Consciousness
Eternals (film) (2021)
-
Proton beam based particle containment system
Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)
-
Ghost trap electromagnetic containment unit
Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)
-
Digital Identity Unmasking Software
Belle (2021 film) (2021)
Frequently Asked Questions
The Visionary Score (0-100) weighs how far ahead of real-world commercial progress a work's predictions landed, combined with how many of its predicted concepts have since started showing up in the market.
These are commercialisation stages for a predicted concept: Emerging means early signals exist but no real product yet, Early Market means real products exist but adoption is still niche, and Mainstream means the concept is now a normal part of everyday technology.
A concept only leaves "Not Yet Emerged" once real-world patent, academic, developer, or editorial signals start accumulating around it. Some sci-fi predictions genuinely have no commercial momentum behind them yet.
Verified predictions and their source works are discovered from Wikidata and Wikipedia and cross-referenced against IdeaCrawl's tracked trends. "Most Surprising Predictions" is editorially curated and refreshed quarterly rather than algorithmically generated.