Physicist Michio Kaku, who has penned several popular books about science, has written a new book called Physics of the Future in which he describes the sorts of innovations we can expect in the 21st century. Among the technological breakthroughs-in-the-making:

• invisibility cloak and goggles
• Internet contact lenses
• modular robots
• a space elevator to the Moon
• space tourism

Any science fiction junkie will tell you that all of these ideas have been around for decades in television shows, movies, novels, and short stories. My two favorite TV shows when I was a kid were Star Trek and The Jetsons, and it occurred to me recently that an awful lot of what was imagined in those shows has become reality, or is about to according to Kaku.

I’m not sure which is more impressive — the prescience of the writers who seemingly foretold the future or the genius of the scientists and engineers who are making it all happen — but one thing seems certain: anything we can imagine we can eventually make reality.