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.
“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.
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.
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.
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 (Internet Archive) while Isaac Asimov’s 1956 The Last Question (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.
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.
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:
This is now the year of Soylent Green.
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:
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
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.
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.
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.