What once was just imagination is now real; what was once the distant future is now around the corner. The science of the future was strangely prophesied by a group of authors, illustrators, filmmakers and scientists whose dreams once may have deemed them renegades and mad scientists. Prophets of Science Fiction is a biographical exploration of eight science fiction visionaries and how their early projections eerily predicted the future. Some sci-fi storytellers are content to merely predict, but Sir Arthur C. Clarke creates. The writer is single-handedly responsible for the cornerstone of modern telecommunication: the satellite. Clarke details the design of satellite technology in a 1945 essay. His failure to patent the radical idea results in an aptly-titled later essay: How I Lost a Billion Dollars in My Spare Time. In the 1960's, Sir Arthur collaborates with legendary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick on the breakthrough epic 2001 . The film revolutionizes sci-fi cinema and correctly prophesizes details of our modern world, including commercial spaceflight, video-chatting, and even iPads. But can the deadly artificial intelligence of 2001 's HAL 9000 be far behind?