# Measuring Our Lives on an SF Timescale: What's Already Happened in SF? What's Coming Up Soon? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [October 22, 2010, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measuring-our-lives-on-an-sf-timescale-whats-already-happened-in-sf-whats-coming-up-soon/558040 "2010-10-22T20:14:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2019, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measuring-our-lives-on-an-sf-timescale-whats-already-happened-in-sf-whats-coming-up-soon/558040/61 "2019-12-22T20:43:46Z")
Richard Bachman’s (Stephen King’s) 1982 novel _The Running Man_ makes passing reference to a major polio outbreak in the U.S. in 2005, apparently after immunizations stopped. ---
**Author:** ![Hatchie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hatchie/32/3983_2.png) [@Hatchie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hatchie)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2019, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measuring-our-lives-on-an-sf-timescale-whats-already-happened-in-sf-whats-coming-up-soon/558040/62 "2019-12-22T21:09:45Z")
“It is estimated that _no_ underwear will be worn by the year ta-wenty ta-wenty!” (Firesign Theatre). The future is now. The future is fair. You may already have won. You may already be there. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2020, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measuring-our-lives-on-an-sf-timescale-whats-already-happened-in-sf-whats-coming-up-soon/558040/63 "2020-01-09T04:46:25Z")
In his 2004 short story “Foreclosure,” Joe Haldeman wrote about the visit of a powerful alien to a realtor in Gainesville, Fla. on Aug. 14, 2017 to discuss humanity’s eviction from Earth. Fortunately, it didn’t (and doesn’t) happen. ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2020, 9:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measuring-our-lives-on-an-sf-timescale-whats-already-happened-in-sf-whats-coming-up-soon/558040/64 "2020-01-09T09:04:40Z")
According to the **Fallout** series of games two important lore things happen this year, the last manned rocket to the Moon launches (Fallout 3) and Robert House is born (New Vegas). The nuclear war that destroys the entire Earth is in 2077 however. ---
**Author:** ![RioRico](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f04885/32.png) [@RioRico](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RioRico)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2020, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measuring-our-lives-on-an-sf-timescale-whats-already-happened-in-sf-whats-coming-up-soon/558040/65 "2020-01-09T23:41:00Z")
> [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#): > > OK, so this isn’t about San Francisco, then. > > Hmmmmm . . . That was my first thought too. My SF time was mostly in the Alioto years. It’s changed. IIRC many Golden and Silver age authors expected faster technical advances but usually not in areas that eventuated. I still await my nuclear helicopter, robot maid, and learning pills. F.L.Wallace put tiny computers in 1952 [Delay in Transit](https://archive.org/stream/galaxymagazine-1952-09/Galaxy_1952_09#page/n5/mode/2up) (Internet Archive) while Isaac Asimov’s 1956 [The Last Question](http://www.physics.princeton.edu/ph115/LQ.pdf) (pdf) described the 2061 Multivac as “miles and miles of massive computer” while a millennium later, computers (one per planet) were “tremendous machines taking up a hundred square miles of land.” Ike kinda missed there. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2020, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measuring-our-lives-on-an-sf-timescale-whats-already-happened-in-sf-whats-coming-up-soon/558040/66 "2020-04-17T05:12:51Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > In _Logan’s Run_, a dystopic 1967 novel by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson, we learn of the Little War, a March 2000 youth uprising that eventually led to everyone over age 21 being killed. They also mention (but don’t explain) “the death of the Republican Party in 1988.” I will refrain from offering an opinion on that bit of then-future history. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2020, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measuring-our-lives-on-an-sf-timescale-whats-already-happened-in-sf-whats-coming-up-soon/558040/67 "2020-04-17T06:18:27Z")
There’s a Wikipedia entry with a long list of books, films, games, TV series, comics, etc. which wrongly predicted events that should have already happened: > **[List of stories set in a future now in the past](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stories_set_in_a_future_now_past)** > > This is a list of fictional stories that, when composed, were set in the future, but the future they predicted is now present or past. The list excludes works that were alternate histories, which were composed after the dates they depict, alternative futures, as depicted in time travel fiction, as well as any works that make no predictions of the future, such as those focusing solely on the future lives of specific fictional characters, or works which, despite their claimed dates, are contempo... ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2022, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measuring-our-lives-on-an-sf-timescale-whats-already-happened-in-sf-whats-coming-up-soon/558040/68 "2022-01-01T17:06:23Z")
This is now the year of _Soylent Green_. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2022, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measuring-our-lives-on-an-sf-timescale-whats-already-happened-in-sf-whats-coming-up-soon/558040/69 "2022-01-01T18:54:52Z")
2022 is also the year that George Jetson was born. Here are a lot of predictions about 2022. You can go through and decide which ones happened and which didn’t: > **['Soylent Green is people!': What futurists predicted for the year 2022](https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/from-the-visionary-to-the-apocalyptic-what-writers-and-thinkers-have-predicted-for-2022)** > > For one thing, 2022 is the year George Jetson is slated to be born ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2022, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measuring-our-lives-on-an-sf-timescale-whats-already-happened-in-sf-whats-coming-up-soon/558040/70 "2022-01-03T14:45:08Z")
We’re only two years away from the tragic future of 2024 as depicted in the 1960 low-budget film **Beyond the Time Barrier**. Apparently we missed all the awful stuff that went before, including the ruining of the atmosphere by atomic testing that let cosmic rays through, rendering just about everyone deaf, mute, and sterile > **[Beyond the Time Barrier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_the_Time_Barrier)** > > Pages for logged out editors learn more > > Beyond the Time Barrier is a 1960 American science fiction film. It was released in September 1960 on a double bill with The Angry Red Planet. It starred Robert Clarke (who also served as producer) and directed by Edgar G. Ulmer. Ulmer's wife Shirley acted as a script editor while their daughter Arianne Arden appeared as a Russian pilot. It was one of two low budget sci-fi films shot back-to-back in Dallas, Texas by Ulmer (the other being The Amaz... ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2022, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measuring-our-lives-on-an-sf-timescale-whats-already-happened-in-sf-whats-coming-up-soon/558040/71 "2022-07-28T03:33:54Z")
Bump because we’re coming up on George Jetson’s birthday. BTW: _Beyond the Time Barrier_ finally answers a question I’d long had. I couldn’t remember which time travel movie involved a revolutionary leading the mutant hordes in an uprising. I kept confusing this with _The Time Travelers_. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2023, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measuring-our-lives-on-an-sf-timescale-whats-already-happened-in-sf-whats-coming-up-soon/558040/72 "2023-09-30T18:47:32Z")
Bumped. Just saw the original _Planet of the Apes_ (1968), and Taylor (Charlton Heston) goes into suspended animation at the beginning with his starship’s chronometer showing the date of July 14,1972. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2023, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measuring-our-lives-on-an-sf-timescale-whats-already-happened-in-sf-whats-coming-up-soon/558040/73 "2023-09-30T21:08:40Z")
When I was a kid, I watched the first TV broadcast of _Omega Man_. The calendar in the car dealership (suggesting the month of the apocalypse - March, 1975, I think) was the same month as the broadcast date. My 12 year old self kinda freaked out over that. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measuring-our-lives-on-an-sf-timescale-whats-already-happened-in-sf-whats-coming-up-soon/558040.md?page=3)