# The (SF) Futures Left Behind **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 1, 2015, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sf-futures-left-behind/708674 "2015-01-01T12:59:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2024, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sf-futures-left-behind/708674/61 "2024-01-25T19:54:26Z")
> [@digs](#): > > WHY would an author give specific dates for their apocalypses? Well, it means they can take a load off building the back story. Tell me it’s “2035”, and I imagine that things are mostly the same. The US still exists, Russia is still a mess, and Disney is still making Mickey Mouse crap. Tell me it’s hundreds or thousands of years in the future, or even just “unspecified date”, and I have to wonder why all the cultural touchstones are the same. So you either have to explain why nothing has changed, or show how everything has changed. If all you really want to do is tell a good story about trying to stop a rouge Saturnian ring from destroying Washington D.C., that’s a pain in the ass. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2024, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sf-futures-left-behind/708674/62 "2024-01-26T02:13:34Z")
> [@Horatius](#): > > If all you really want to do is tell a good story about trying to stop a rouge Saturnian ring from destroying Washington D.C. … Look! My idea is already part of the zeitgeist. . . . Thank my lucky star! ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2024, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sf-futures-left-behind/708674/63 "2024-01-26T02:27:24Z")
> [@Horatius](#): > > If all you really want to do is tell a good story about trying to stop a rouge Saturnian ring from destroying Washington D.C., that’s a pain in the ass. I thought the rings of Saturn are mainly yellow and orangeish. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2024, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sf-futures-left-behind/708674/64 "2024-01-26T02:29:40Z")
> [@Horatius](#): > > > [@digs](#): > > > > WHY would an author give specific dates for their apocalypses? > > Well, it means they can take a load off building the back story. Tell me it’s “2035”, and I imagine that things are mostly the same. The US still exists, Russia is still a mess, and Disney is still making Mickey Mouse crap. You don’t give a date, though, just put up a card that explains it’s “20 minutes into the future” or “sometime in the future”. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2024, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sf-futures-left-behind/708674/65 "2024-01-26T02:29:52Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > In another Heinlein book, _Space Cadet_, there’s reference to the unsuccessful 1971 _Astarte_ mission to Venus Are you saying that in our timeline, it was successful? ---
**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 26, 2024, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sf-futures-left-behind/708674/66 "2024-01-26T21:43:10Z")
I think you have to actually exist to be considered “successful.” ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2024, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sf-futures-left-behind/708674/67 "2024-01-26T21:57:53Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > It’s just notable in that the final battle takes place in 2019 in an under construction Olympic stadium. As it happens the actual Olympics ended up being held in Tokyo IRL in 2020. At the age of fourteen I wrote a SF story about a terrorist attack on the Munich Olympics in the then-future year of 1972. Admittedly, in my story they used lasers, and the moral of this story is, don’t rely on SF to predict the future. ---
**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:** [August 29, 2024, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sf-futures-left-behind/708674/68 "2024-08-29T20:26:48Z")
A neutron star, which turns out to be inhabited by tiny sentient aliens who evolved under immense gravity, is discovered in the constellation Draco by Earth astronomers in 2020 in Robert L. Forward’s 1980 sf novel _Dragon’s Egg_. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2024, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sf-futures-left-behind/708674/69 "2024-08-29T22:57:12Z")
> [@digs](#): > > So, after seeing all too many examples in literature, WHY would an author give specific dates for their apocalypses? For one thing, it sounds good. And fits natural language; too much avoidance of specific dates can start to sound weird. Also, the “Year 2000 effect”; dating major events in and around that date was really popular in sci-fi for decades. ---
**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:** [August 4, 2026, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sf-futures-left-behind/708674/70 "2026-08-04T18:15:46Z")
Bumped. Today we reached a future date written about by Ray Bradbury: > [@Today is August 4, 2026, in the city of Allendale, California](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/today-is-august-4-2026-in-the-city-of-allendale-california/1032132/4): > > I remember that story well, and am glad to see we’ve reached today without (yet) destroying ourselves in a nuclear war. And see: [There Will Come Soft Rains (short story) - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Will_Come_Soft_Rains_(short_story)) ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2026, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sf-futures-left-behind/708674/71 "2026-08-05T01:53:12Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > You don’t give a date, though, just put up a card that explains it’s “20 minutes into the future” or “sometime in the future”. They did that with **Max Headroom** , with the original idea of each episode being five minutes long. By the time it got to TV, the episodes were 30 minutes, which meant by the end of each epsiode we were already ten minutes past 20 minutes into the future. See how tricky it can get? ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2026, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sf-futures-left-behind/708674/72 "2026-08-05T01:57:49Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > You don’t give a date, though, just put up a card that explains it’s “20 minutes into the future” or “sometime in the future”. I’m reminded of _Streets of Fire_, the 1984 action-musical-tragic-love-story “rock & roll fairy tale” movie where the title card simply says “Another time, another place” to describe its setting - a nameless American city with '50s cars and music, '70s urban blight, and '80s fashion sensibilities. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2026, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sf-futures-left-behind/708674/73 "2026-08-05T02:47:47Z")
Besides dates, there’s a lot of sci-fi that was rendered obsolete by the collapse of the USSR. _The Mickey Mouse Olympics_ by Thomas Sullivan for example was published in Omni in 1979, and involved a Disney-sponsored Olympics where the rivalry between the US and USSR was a core plot point. Nobody really expected the USSR to just _go away_ like it did. ---
**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:** [August 5, 2026, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sf-futures-left-behind/708674/74 "2026-08-05T03:05:19Z")
_2010: Odyssey Two_, the Arthur C. Clarke novel and the movie based on it, both feature a joint U.S.-Soviet space mission that year. The _ST:TNG_ episode “The Naked Now,” set in 2364, also makes (a hard to spot) reference to the USSR: [https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Baikonur\_Cosmodrome](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Baikonur_Cosmodrome) ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2026, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sf-futures-left-behind/708674/75 "2026-08-05T03:12:07Z")
The book _Armageddon 2419_ introduced the character who became Buck Rogers. But his name was not William it was Anthony. The book never called him Buck either, but sometimes he was called Tony. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2026, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sf-futures-left-behind/708674/76 "2026-08-05T12:06:18Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > a nameless American city with '50s cars and music, '70s urban blight, and '80s fashion sensibilities I remember watching a bootleg copy of _ **Batman** _ (the one with Michael Keaton) in Russia back in 1990. The guy I was with (a Russian and a good friend) couldn’t understand what '30s-style gangsters with Tommy guns were doing in what was supposed to be the present day, and why what was obviously NYC looked so Gothic. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2026, 12:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sf-futures-left-behind/708674/77 "2026-08-05T12:19:02Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Nobody really expected the USSR to just _go away_ like it did. In the awful 1987 miniseries _ **Ameяika** _, Sam Neill, playing a Russian officer, says the USSR never expected the US to “just give up.” That’s right, the United States surrendered to the Soviet Union right in the middle of Ronald Reagan’s second term! ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2026, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sf-futures-left-behind/708674/78 "2026-08-05T12:22:52Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > The _ST:TNG_ episode “The Naked Now,” set in 2364, also makes (a hard to spot) reference to the USSR: [https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Baikonur\_Cosmodrome](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Baikonur_Cosmodrome) I liked seeing the name of the ship printed in Cyrillic on its commissioning plaque. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sf-futures-left-behind/708674.md?page=3)