# What year is Blade runner more likely to take place? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 10, 2012, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-year-is-blade-runner-more-likely-to-take-place/624680 "2012-06-10T03:29:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Gangster\_Octopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a8b319/32.png) [@Gangster\_Octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gangster_Octopus)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2012, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-year-is-blade-runner-more-likely-to-take-place/624680/1 "2012-06-10T03:29:54Z")
Watching Blade Runner now and of course one of the first things it says is ‘Los Angeles 2019’. Now clearly it seems too futuristic to be 2019. What year would you say is a better guess as to the year? I’m thinking 2040. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2012, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-year-is-blade-runner-more-likely-to-take-place/624680/2 "2012-06-10T03:37:05Z")
> [@Gangster\_Octopus](#): > > Watching Blade Runner now and of course one of the first things it says is ‘Los Angeles 2019’. Now clearly it seems too futuristic to be 2019. What year would you say is a better guess as to the year? > > I’m thinking 2040. Because we will prospectively have monstrous pyramidal apartment complexes, flying cars, clone slaves, and faster than light travel in 28 years? The future is looking bright! ---
**Author:** ![Gangster\_Octopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a8b319/32.png) [@Gangster\_Octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gangster_Octopus)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2012, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-year-is-blade-runner-more-likely-to-take-place/624680/3 "2012-06-10T03:55:41Z")
> [@astro](#): > > Because we will prospectively have monstrous pyramidal apartment complexes, flying cars, clone slaves, and faster than light travel in 28 years? > > The future is looking bright! Well no, I don’t expect out to be exactly the same, just what year could you put on it to make it more believable these days. ---
**Author:** ![pancakes3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ba9def/32.png) [@pancakes3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pancakes3)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2012, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-year-is-blade-runner-more-likely-to-take-place/624680/4 "2012-06-10T03:57:48Z")
it’s debatable that the US will even have high speed rail by 2040 (or maglev) - and Japan’s been running it since the early 70’s. Flying cars, renegade robots, etc? I’d say 2100. ---
**Author:** ![Mr\_Shine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr_shine/32/464_2.png) [@Mr\_Shine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Shine)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2012, 9:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-year-is-blade-runner-more-likely-to-take-place/624680/5 "2012-06-10T09:18:00Z")
I’d go for 2040 too. It’s not realistic in any way, but neither was 2019 in 1982. ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2012, 10:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-year-is-blade-runner-more-likely-to-take-place/624680/6 "2012-06-10T10:11:02Z")
Realistically, we’ll have all the other technology long before we have FTL starships or even regular passenger travel within the solar system. So, everything else: 2100’ish. The space part: at least a hundred years after that, maybe 2200’ish. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2012, 10:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-year-is-blade-runner-more-likely-to-take-place/624680/7 "2012-06-10T10:24:44Z")
Ignoring everything but the sentient robots indistinguishable from humans… 2080. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2012, 11:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-year-is-blade-runner-more-likely-to-take-place/624680/8 "2012-06-10T11:04:12Z")
It will happen in 2059. I checked. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2012, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-year-is-blade-runner-more-likely-to-take-place/624680/9 "2012-06-10T14:40:37Z")
No FTL travel is explicitly mentioned in the film. People have speculated about it, in regards to references such as the Tannhauser Gate being a space portal or something. But no need to assume hyperdrives based on the movie alone. If we had all the necessary tech for flying cars (with no blast) and such now, it would still take nearly a century to build up the necessary infrastructure to build the off world colonies and associated transport systems. Note that a large percentage of the able-body, skilled labor force has left, so hundreds of millions have gone off world. That ain’t easy to do. So, at least a century to develop the tech, another to build it up. 2219. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2012, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-year-is-blade-runner-more-likely-to-take-place/624680/10 "2012-06-10T18:19:11Z")
Never. Nothing about the movie has any coherency to do it. It’s not a world; it’s a bunch of visual tropes taken off the shelves of previous science fiction and collected in a basket and taken to the self-service checkout. You can’t think of any of it as real, or realistic. It’s as totally artificial and nonsensical a future as anyone ever put together. You can talk about future dates for some of the individual items. They will never cohere in one timeline, though. Blade Runner is an extreme case of this, but that’s why no science fiction worlds ever are reached when their “future” year passes. No sf writer I know of is remotely capable of forming a coherent future world - no human mind is - and none that I know of truly try to make the effort. There’s no gain to doing that much work. Flashy non-sequiturs mashed together are applauded a hundred times more. This has always been true, from the days of Verne onward. ---
**Author:** ![Illuminatiprimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/illuminatiprimus/32/11520_2.png) [@Illuminatiprimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Illuminatiprimus)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2012, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-year-is-blade-runner-more-likely-to-take-place/624680/11 "2012-06-11T21:56:57Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Never. Nothing about the movie has any coherency to do it. It’s not a world; it’s a bunch of visual tropes taken off the shelves of previous science fiction and collected in a basket and taken to the self-service checkout. You can’t think of any of it as real, or realistic. It’s as totally artificial and nonsensical a future as anyone ever put together. You can talk about future dates for some of the individual items. They will never cohere in one timeline, though. _sobs_ But I thought I was the only one who thought the Emperor was naked! ---
**Author:** ![BlinkingDuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eada6e/32.png) [@BlinkingDuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlinkingDuck)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2012, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-year-is-blade-runner-more-likely-to-take-place/624680/12 "2012-06-11T22:09:22Z")
You guys are waaayyyyy too optimistic. I’ll go with 2579. Hell, I’ll go with 4579…we have 20 centuries of tooling around our solar system minimum methinks. ---
**Author:** ![Gangster\_Octopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a8b319/32.png) [@Gangster\_Octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gangster_Octopus)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2012, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-year-is-blade-runner-more-likely-to-take-place/624680/13 "2012-06-11T22:13:26Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Never. Nothing about the movie has any coherency to do it. It’s not a world; it’s a bunch of visual tropes taken off the shelves of previous science fiction and collected in a basket and taken to the self-service checkout. You can’t think of any of it as real, or realistic. It’s as totally artificial and nonsensical a future as anyone ever put together. You can talk about future dates for some of the individual items. They will never cohere in one timeline, though. > > Blade Runner is an extreme case of this, but that’s why no science fiction worlds ever are reached when their “future” year passes. No sf writer I know of is remotely capable of forming a coherent future world - no human mind is - and none that I know of truly try to make the effort. There’s no gain to doing that much work. Flashy non-sequiturs mashed together are applauded a hundred times more. This has always been true, from the days of Verne onward. The question, which I probably phrased very poorly, is if the movie was made today, what year do you think would be reasonable to make it believable enough for a SciFi movie. I get that almost every SciFi movie will not be accurate, but what year could be in the opening that wouldn’t produce eye-rolling for someone seeing the movie for the first time. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2012, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-year-is-blade-runner-more-likely-to-take-place/624680/14 "2012-06-12T00:39:29Z")
It doesn’t work that way. Has there ever been an sf film in the past that looks believable today? Even the most realistic, like 2001, never became realer in 2001. What year can you say that it set in? SF futures are either near-future, medium-future, or far-future but never are a particular year. Don’t overthink it. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2012, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-year-is-blade-runner-more-likely-to-take-place/624680/15 "2012-06-12T01:45:58Z")
Fifteen minutes into the future. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2012, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-year-is-blade-runner-more-likely-to-take-place/624680/16 "2012-06-12T15:43:39Z")
> [@Larry\_Mudd](#): > > Fifteen minutes into the future. So it’s set 5 minutes before _Max Headroom_??? (As for MH: Bryce’s birthdate + age implies it was set about 2004ish. So they were off a little bit too. Still waiting on my Zik-Zaks.)