Science

The Craziest Sci-Fi Fantasies That Got Closer to Reality This Year

It goes without saying that the future hasn't officially arrived until we have flying cars and jetpacks. But that doesn't mean 2014 didn't see some awesome advances that bring science fiction closer to reality.
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Central to the plot of Gattaca was a DNA sequencer that the genetically-inferior hero, played by Ethan Hawke, has to game in order to become a spacecraft pilot. This year, New Zealand researchers built the first handheld DNA sequencer which they swear is for health care diagnostics and not to keep me from my dream of one day rocketing to Saturn.University of Otago, New Zealand

In 1964, Isaac Asimov wrote that in 50 years we'd be living in a science fiction reality. Among his prophesies that have now arrived are instant coffee, driverless cars, and robots to vacuum our homes.

But Asimov wasn't the only sci-fi visionary, and his predictions seem quaint against some of 2014's actual advances, such as robotic arm transplants, cloned pets, and quantum teleportation. Here is a gallery of the technologies that brought us closer to—or in a few cases fulfilled completely—the promises made in our favorite works of science fiction.