Galactica 1980 took place in 1980, and it’s implied from dialogue that BattleStar Galactica thus took place around the late 1950’s or early 1960’s. That said, Galactica 1980 managed to peg Earth technology for that year fairly accurately.
Of course, since both shows had Earth as either a sought-after mythical place or a not-nearly-as-advanced-as-we-had-hoped place that needed defending, the level of technical advance on Earth wasn’t that important. In fact, according to the old Galactica shows, Earth experienced a serious technological retreat (woudl that be the opposite of a technological advance?).
Even though they’ve buried that continuity and are starting over, I think it’d be kinda neat to see what chain of events lead to the Earthers ending up with little-to-none of the technology they would presumably need to travel from Kobol to Earth (such as, yaknow, manned space ships capable of traveling away from Earth).
Space: Above and Beyond takes place in 2061, I think. It seems a bit overly ambitious from a tech viewpoint, since it involves an Earth with a space-faring military with FTL capability, along with androids (Silicates) and genetically engineered clones (InVitros, AKA “Tanks”).
An amusing example: Back when I was in 6th grade, we wrote books, under the Young Authors program. A couple of classmates were writing a science fiction book, and using me as a sort of unofficial science advisor. They wanted a far-off, futuristic year to set their story in, and settled on 1990.
I was in sixth grade in 1989.
Of course, my (unrelated) book was also SF, but I set it in 2057, and most of the high-tech came from aliens, anyway (as the story opened, the humans had just managed to steal the designs for the nuclear propulsion the alien invaders used, and we later got our bacon saved by another alien race using reactionless FTL drives). But we did have a significant chemical-powered space infrastructure in place of our own, which may have been too optimistic.
The remarkable advances shown in “Star Trek” are largely technological. It’s been mentioned that it also shows the human race as living in peace, but of course that is not really true. Humans in the Star Trek universe have simply externalized their aggression; rather than nations fighting each other, the Federation fights other empires. The Federation is actually a moderately militaristic state, and its inhabitants act just like Canadians; they’re polite, speak either English or accented French, dress really badly, and like to pretend they’re better people than they really are.
That’s no more remarkable a bit of progress than the United States reunifying after the Civil War and getitng into the business of kicking ass overseas.
Really, the entire Star Trek universe is predicated on the invention of warp drive; it’s warp drive that makes space travel possible, that brings humans into contact with other intelligent species, and all that good shit. So there’s still time to get there.
I know that the idea that Star Trek takes place in the 23rd century has been around at least since the Star Trek movies. But TOS contradicts that. For example, in The Squire of Gothos, Kirk comments that Trelaine’s concept of what Earth is like (early 19th century) would be what you would see with Earth “900 light years away”.
And Kirk told Lieutenant Colonel Fellini in Tomorrow is Yesterday that 200 years “ought to be just about right” when he threatened to lock him up. They were intentionally vague about the timeframe of the Trek universe until Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
Roddenberry didn’t want to set TOS in a specific year, just in the future. That’s why he created Stardates. Hints were droped throughout TOS setting in anywhere from 200 to 800 years in the future. The century was first mentioned in one of the TOS movies and the actual year, 2364, was first mentioned in TNG’s first season finale, The Neutral Zone.
Real, genuine, oldtime Startrek First Nerddom nerd checking in, who used to watch the TOS re-runs in the college TV room in the Pre-Movie era.
My impression was that the writers wanted it to have recognizable connections with the present, for instance, the fact that Bones came from Georgia and Kirk from Iowa. But it had to be far enough out that unimaginable and likely impossible technology could have been achieved. But the writers were not terribly literate scentifically speaking, so they didn’t always follow this plan too well. For instance, in the TOS timeline we are only 11 years away from the invention of Warp Drive.
A bit farther than that actually, but not too far. The timeline puts Zefram Cochrane’s invention of the warp drive taking place in 2063 C.E. Almost sixty years away.
But light doesn’t travel faster than light. Lumpy’s point, which you missed by a little less than twelve parsecs, is that Trelaine’s planet is 900 light years from Earth and he is receiving the light from Earth of the 19th century, the events of that episode must be 19th century + 900 years = 28th century.
Of course, scientists increased the speed of light in 2208, so all bets are off.
I’ve seen words to that effect (by Clarke, I think) before that version of Cringely ever wrote them.
It would be interesting to survey the consensus view of the future by sf in the past. I’ve got a book called “The Year 2000” with stories set 6 years ago now, which was way off. Sometimes people are pessimistic - Clarke had the first moon shot, which opens Childhood’s End in 1975.
Me and my room mates had our list of movies we had to watch in 2005. These were all movies taking place in the faraway future of, you guessed it, 2005. IIRC, this included Transformers: The Movie, Tom Clancy’s Net Force, and one or two other movies.
Incidentally, Net Force would have been cooler if it didn’t try too damn hard, and if they had an actor with the range they needed for the main character. Don’t get me wrong, Scott Bakula is awesome, but he can’t seem to do angry righteous badass. Bonus points for having a knockoff of Bill Gates as a secondary villian though. The book was SO much cooler though, and I need to get the later books in that series. (Actually, I’m enough of a geek to remember which Op Center book Net Force is spun off of, Games of State, about a group of Neo Nazis teaming up with a group of German Facsists and a French video game company to take over the world. Somehow. I actually can’t remember the specifics of the plot anymore, but it had badass scenes of a guy in a wheelchair using his bad-ass intelligence (and a sub machine gun and a van) to foil various Neo Nazi plots on his life.)
You should all read NetForce though for the high-speed car chases on the information superhighway (Yay Virtual Reality).
