When I worked at NASA I met many scientists and engineers who were inspired as youths by science fiction. Those professionals in partnership with private industry created handheld communicators, portable x-ray devices, and even the Space Shuttle.
Before I joined the agency I remember seeing pictures of the Space Shuttle concept in the newspaper. Those early images reminded me of old Buck Rogers films, with his ship spewing smoke behind it while it flew like an airplane.
The late science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke in 1945 proposed communications satellites.
And stories of mining asteroids may well have encouraged NASA scientists and engineers to plan to use robotics to capture an asteroid, place it into lunar orbit and then study it.
If you read science fiction, you are previewing possible new devices, systems, methods, and events. I wonder what are the most practical new ideas that have appeared in science fiction in the last 12 months?
johnbluck 
Do they have to be practical? For me what I like about science fiction is that it introduces big concepts (which may not seem big in the book, often they are just normal, but are big given where our tech is now) which then inspires a generation to think and dream about these things, thus spurring them on to want to create and push boundaries. Which is why I think this is such a good idea for a bill: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/apr/19/bill-compulsory-science-fiction-west-virginia