When did people really start looking to The Future?

Factual Questions
1

“Science Fiction” as a genre has been fairly popular since the mid-19th century, although its roots go back a bit further- but oddly not all that far, to around the 16th century, as far as I can tell.

There aren’t, as far as I’m aware, any contemporary Greek stories about them travelling forward in time to a land where people have self-driving chariots or the ability to flit scrolls from one side of the known world to the other in the blink of an eye, or Elizabethan plays in which the protaganist fights Martians. In short, it seems that until the late 17th century, people as a whole really didn’t seem to pay much attention to what things would be like In The Future, or if they did, it seemed to be under the assumption that things would be much as they were then, but without that pesky Mongolian Horde/Inquisition/King bothering them all the time.

*“Praye now, gent’l audience, as we Viewe the far-off Yeare of Two Thousande and Sevene, Anno Domini!”
Two guys wearing doublets, hose, and ruffs are sitting at a table drinking ale from mugs

“Yea, our lotte doth be improvethed Mightily since we depos’d the Evil and Usurpious Turkish Pope King! No longere hath we Feare ye foule stenche o’er the lande!”

“Verily! Behold, my Turnip crop doth overflowe with bountie and vigour! Let us render Praise Be unto The Lord for oure Benefaction!”

“A noble suggestione, brother; Lette it be so!”

Exeunt*

All of which (besides being a cheap excuse for me to type in a poor imitation of Elizabethan English ;)) is intended to illustrate my question: When did people start looking to The Future, and expecting it to be radically different from their own time?

The lines are open, folks… let’s hear your thoughts!

2

No ifs here. They most certainly did look forward to a future of world peace. (This is true of the ancient Jews and Christians; I don’t know about other cultures.)

The difference between that and Science Fiction is: technology.

The reason they didn’t project from their present to their future, is quite simply because they didn’t see much difference between their present and their past.

Quite a bit changed from 1750 to 1950, and even from 1850 to 1900, and similar periods. But until the Industrial Revolution got started, no parent ever told their kid, “Boy, you have it great. When I was young we didn’t have these crazy gadgets.” It was only when parents did start saying this kind of stuff that the kids started imagining what the world would by like for their own children.

3

We just had a thread on this, with some excellent replies (mostly from Exapno, who has an excellent reference on it) about a month back.

4

I read somewhere that through the middle ages the default assumption in the Mediterranean and European world was that life at least in some sense repeats itself and the future and past would look the same. It was not until the 1500s or so that people thought long term change happened.

5

I wouldn’t say that’s necessarily the case - huge numbers of Christians, for example, awaited the second coming of Christ which one assumes would cause some changes in the world. Many people throughout history anticipated a religious future, if not a technological one.

6

The thread was Futuristic fiction - when and why?.

Although that concentrated on fictional stories of the future, I think it’s really very much the same question. And the same answer. With so much of the earth unknown, people could just look to the “wild” areas for worlds that were utterly alien. Only after the age of exploration did reality hem in imaginations.

When you get past those first stabs at the field, technology is an important answer but not the sole answer. The earliest fictions began before what we think of as the technological revolution. It’s true, though, that until the age of technology people tended to look back at a mythical perfected past and contrast their current times unfavorably with that age. (And what’s changed, you ask. :rolleyes: ) Even the Greeks thought there had been gold and silver ages and they were living in bronze or iron years. Why look to the future if you think it will only be worse than the present? The industrial revolution was the first event that got a sizable percentage of the population off of farms and into a future in which they were not almost certain to live as their parents had. Socially you can add revolutions into the mix. The British fictions referenced in the other thread came about the time when King Charles was dethroned. Abandoning monarchy was certainly a radically different future from the past 1000 years. In the next century the American and French Revolutions added more perspective to new beginnings.

In short, a number of major changes in history had to come together to trigger the idea not just of change, but the possibility of a radical new way of living.

7

I’d say the change started in the 19th Century.

8

I don’t have a cite, but didn’t some Roman author write a story about people travelling to the Moon?

9

You should have checked the thread I linked to.

10

Jews have been saying “Next Year in Jerusalem!” for quite a while, but I don’t they’ve ever expected to find ray-guns and jet-packs there.

11

I beg to differ. :smiley: