Science fiction – not all just make-believe

The author of "Zero" and "Blackout" tells us his surprinsingly positive view on Digitization, talks about basic income, Big Data and stockpile and even the topic of his new book.

Where do big new ideas come from? Filmmakers and science fiction writers brim over with creativity. And they are often way ahead of their time. Some of their fantastical ideas end up becoming reality later down the line, as our photo gallery shows.

Who'd have thought that a small city in western Germany would become a hub for science fiction literature? The Phantastische Bibliothek, or fantastic library, in the city of Wetzlar has over 270,000 fantasy books, making it the world's largest public collection of its kind.

In movies and books, authors often invent automatons, machines and scenarios that seem far removed from reality. Yet some actual research projects also sound like odd science fiction concepts. We present some of them here.