Bumped.
In Joe Haldeman’s sf novel Worlds Apart (1983), he mentions “the tiny double star Janus” being discovered in 2012, “tagging along with the Sun a mere tenth of a light year away. The stars were both black dwarfs, barely hot enough to be considered stars. But one of them, Alfvén, was made of antimatter.” Maybe named after this guy: Hannes Alfvén - Wikipedia
2018 is the year that Eric Cartman’s Dawson’s Creek Trapper Keeper breaks away from humanity and becomes unstoppable.
Meanwhile Woodrow Wilson Smith is watching it all go down from his hammock.
According to Robots by McKenzie and Clement, all humans were dead by 2000, a result of the Robotic Uprising of the late 1990s.
We’re only four years away now from subsisting on food rations produced by the wonderful folks at the Soylent Corporation.
1980: We did not build a generating station for the energy source was found on the planet Pluto that, beamed across the Solar System, would solve the world’s energy needs. “Artery of Fire”
1980: Supreme Headquarters, Alien Defense Organization was not founded (or was it?)
1980: No flying cars “Just Imagine”
1985: We did not land the “First Spaceship on Venus” to determine that the Venusians had actually destroyed themselves in attempting an invasion of Earth.
2001: We did not launch a “Journey to the Seventh Planet”, which would have been the first landing on Uranus
And in a show that isn’t technically sci fi but might as well be, for all that happens:
Not only did Lisa Simpson not get married on August 1, 2010, she hasn’t aged a day past 8 in decades!
There’s still time for her to become president, though.
Having just finished Matt Ruff’s Sewer, Gas, and Electric, I’ve spotted a mixed bag of stuff that happened and stuff that didn’t. The book is set in 2023 but via flashbacks tells a story covering from mid 20th century up until then.
[ul]
[li]Walt Disney corporation accidentally creates a virus that exterminates nearly all black people on earth - no.[/li][li]America run by crazed real estate billionaire from New York - yes.[/li][li]Eco-terrorists in polka-dotted submarine travel the world, rescuing endangered species and capturing corporate freighters - no.[/li][li]Great white sharks inhabit the sewers of New York - not that I know of.[/li][li]The Boy Scouts admit girls - yes.[/li][li]Queen Elizabeth becomes hard-nosed dictator intent on violent revenge against the USA - no.[/li][/ul]
Yes, the show specifically said she follows President Trump.
Just read Arthur C. Clarke’s 1956 funny short story “A Question of Residence,” in which British astronauts on the Moon extend their stay by a few weeks so that the reminiscences and exclusive-rights articles they’ve written there will be tax-free under the Capital Gains Act of 1972.
OK, so this isn’t about San Francisco, then.
Hmmmmm . . .
Well, I’m still waiting for the Arisians to start handing out Lenses.
Well, if we’re going to talk about living in a science fiction story, let me point out that 2019 is the year that all three movies Blade Runner, Akira, and The Running Man happen.
Just pulled out my copy of Star Trek Chronology.
According to the episode “Past Tense, Part 1” of DS9, in 2020 the US government creates special “Sanctuary Districts” for the numerous homeless and jobless people. They quickly degenerate into inhumane internment camps where the unemployed, homeless, mentally ill, and other outcast are imprisoned.
Qadgop, the episode this takes place in is actually set in San Francisco as well.
I’m now listening to an audiobook of Robert A. Heinlein’s 1951 sf thriller The Puppet Masters, and there’s reference to the Whitmanite cult, which leaves its Antarctic enclave in 1974 to establish the New Zion colony near the north pole of Venus (a jungle world in Heinlein’s timeline, and in several other early works of sf, including Ray Bradbury’s short stories).
I’m re-reading Joe Haldeman’s excellent 1974 military sf novel The Forever War, and he mentions the Ration War of 2007, when mass starvation killed many millions across the globe. Glad we missed it!
The Forever War was ludicrously early on its predictions. The opening of the novel is a mere ten years after when it was written, and in that time, space travel has become routine, we’ve discovered multiple nearby black holes, explored them enough to find weird effects from them, studied those weird effects enough to construct detailed theories about them, applied those theories to build a practical starship drive, and used that starship drive to meet and start a war with an alien race. Plus a complete radical overhaul of military policies and traditions.
Which is closest to our current reality?
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.
I’ve been rewatching all of Community. I thought of this thread a couple of days ago when it was mentioned that in 2019 Troy Barnes invents Dance Pants. (In our timeline, all he did was conceal Baby Yoda.)
(And of course it didn’t go unnoticed.)