If you know your science fiction, The European Space Agency wants you. They?re asking sci-fi buffs to send in suggestions of novels that contain good ideas for new tech. Studying science fiction for ideas and technologies,  they reckon, could be useful in future missions. Meanwhile, a panel of readers is busy combing sci-fi novels and short stories published in the early decades of the last century to see if today?s techn has managed to catch up with ideas of the science fiction masters. Any good ideas turned up in the search will be assessed by scientists to see if they can help the agency in its ongoing mission to explore space. Dr David Raitt, co-ordinator of the Innovative Technologies From Science Fiction For Space Applications project (ISTF), said an initial scan had already proved the worth of the approach. Sci-fi often precedes the real, says Raitt. Planetary landers were mentioned in stories from 1928, stabilising fins on rockets appeared in fiction in 1929 and a space station crewed by astronauts and re-supplied by regular flights from Earth was considered in 1945. Dick Tracy cartoons in the 1940s had the lantern-jawed detective using a watch that was also a videophone and a camera ? and only in January this year did Casio introduce a wristwatch with the same functionality. Professor Rait?s own first science fiction novel is due to be published in October. Perhaps people will be plundering this for ideas in a hundred years? time.