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Palmer Luckey explains why science fiction is a great place to look for ideas
“One of the things that I’ve realized in my career is that nothing I ever come up with will be new. I’ve literally never come up with an idea that a science fiction author has not come up with before.”
Palmer continues:
“It makes sense. There’s a lot of [science fiction authors]. They’ve been around for a long time. And they don’t have to make things. And they don’t have to wait for the right moment. I started Oculus at just the right moment for it to succeed. But a science fiction author doesn’t have to wait for something to be possible to think about it and to write about it and for people to be excited about the idea. And so every time I’ve come up with something, I’ve been able to find — usually many, sometimes one — science fiction pieces addressing literally exactly that idea by some guy who just thought about it like 50 years ago.”
He gives a few examples:
“Some of the stuff that I’m building today, for example, in the AR/VR space around augmenting the vision of soldiers — these are ideas that are from 1959 Starship Troopers novels. These are old ideas that have only recently become technologically feasible. The idea of autonomous fighter jets, that’s been around for about 100 years… people have been thinking about this since computers were programmed with punchcards.”
So if you’re having a hard time thinking of startup ideas, try reading science fiction.
Video source: @ShawnRyan762 (2025)
