Twenty Minutes Into the Future: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

Welcome To The World Of Tomorrow! Literally.

* The experimental film ''Sweet Movie'' is set in 1984 (ten years after the film's release) and much of the plot is driven by a show where the most pure woman in the world is found. It gets weirder from there.

* ''[[Real Steel]]'' is set in the year 2020. According to the film's timeline, human boxing died out around 2014, being replaced with the more violent World Robot Boxing league. Aside from that, everything looks like present day, save for a few changes (iPhones and computers look more futuristic, referees at boxing matches were denser armor, etc.).

 

== Literature ==

* ''[[Snow Crash]]'' by Neal Stephenson was published in 1992, and for the timeline to work (Hiro and and Raven's fathers were WWII vets) the story would have to have occurred by sometime in the early 2000's. "The Diamond Age" seems to be set in the same universe, just a few decades after "Snow Crash".

** There are two words in ''Diamond Age'' that suggest {{spoiler|a character in common. The words? "Chiseled Spam"}}. Based on this, the events take place 50–70 years after ''Snow Crash''.

** ''[[League of Extraordinary Gentlemen]]: Black Dossier'' put the book's events ''in'' 1948, allowing them to {{spoiler|show a fallen Airstrip One government ten years later}}.

* Many novels and short stories by [[Philip K. Dick]] (and the film adaptations of them, such as ''[[Blade Runner]]'', ''[[Total Recall]]'', ''[[Minority Report]]'', and ''[[A Scanner Darkly]]'') are set just a decade or so in the future. [[I Want My Jetpack|He was much better at entertaining than predicting the near future.]] It's not uncommon for novels written in the 1960s and 70s that take place in the 80s and 90s to feature flying cars, androids, World Wars, [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|and legalized marijuana]].

* Joe Haldeman admits that setting his novel ''[[The Forever War]]'', about a deep space war to start in the far-off future of 1996, was silly in retrospect, and was done mainly so that the non-coms could be Vietnam veterans. He told any objectors to just "think of it as a parallel universe."

* The ''Dirk Pitt'' series of novels by Clive Cussler are usually set a year or two into the future, with the United States switching to metric and super A.I. computers with hot chick holograms.

** Heinlein invented the waterbed as a concept. That prevented it from being patented. He makes an amusing comment about it in his brick-sized diatribe ''Expanding Universe'' from 1980.

** The themes in the book extrapolated heavily from the 1950s "[[The Beat Generation|Beat Generation]]" subculture, which was the precursor to the counterculture movements of the '60s and early '70s. Its "Church of All Worlds" was based on elements of the neo-pagan/"New Age" mystery religions which were gaining popularity among disaffected youth of the time. Heinlein himself wrote that the book "could not be published commercially until the public mores changed. I could see them changing and it turned out that I had timed it right." Many prominent figures of the counterculture would refer to ''Stranger in a Strange Land'' as a major influence on their thinking and philosophy, particularly the aspects of free love, communalism, and social liberation. Beyond merely predicting the counterculture, the book helped to create it.

* ''[[Numbers]] 2: the Chaos'' was published in 2011 and takes place in 2026.

 

* The MTV sketch comedy show ''[[The State]]'' lampooned this idea with a sketch where a man wakes up in a hospital after only a short time knocked out in an accident only to find that he missed the "most exciting 15 minutes in the history of the world", and now aliens have landed and all sorts of things have changed.

* The setting of ''[[Max Headroom]]''. You can still smoke in public buildings. It's a federal offense to turn your TV off. This being cyberpunk, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86-zyRlcMi4&fmt=13#t=320 there is an Internet,] though it gets called "The System", and the way it's shown to work is [[It's a Small Net After All|pretty thoroughly gonzo]]. There's no reality shows. [[Japan Takes Over the World|Japan rules the business world]]. Network news is filmed on camcorders.

* Inverted in ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' in the episode "2010", where contact with an advanced civilization willing to share technology makes 2010 a much different world than it was at the time of filming. A very visible bit of [[Zeerust]] is the fashions of this 2010: taking a cue from ''[[Wild Palms]]'', President Kinsey wears an outfit that would look more at home in ''1910''.

* ''[[Space Island One]]'' was set on a space station just a hair more advanced than would be possible today.

** The prequel series ''Caprica'', set about 50–60 years prior to the main series, follows the pattern to a degree by dressing the characters in fashions reminiscent of the '40s and '50s.

** In addition to similarities in clothing, the series features other modern-day elements, such as British rifles and American HMMW-Vs.

* ''[[Battle Tanx]]'' and its sequel, released in 1999, set in 2001 and 2006 respectively. Tanks in-game are certainly more advanced than in real life; the real-world M1 Abrams is the [[Jack of All Stats]] to things such as hovering tanks or tanks with laser cannons.

* ''[[Aerobiz]]'': The Supersonic Era of gameplay from the 1994-released Aerobiz Supersonic has the player starting in 2000. It painted a bright future of supersonic airliners and 1000+ passenger super-jumbo jets covering the globe.

* ''[[The Trail of Anguish]]'' is set in 2073, but its set at a campus that would seem perfectly at home in the early 21st century. The game's a prequel to ''[[The Perils of Akumos]]'', which is instead full-on sci-fi.

* Played with in the final content of [[World of Warcraft|Cataclysm]]. The Hour of Twilight instance and the Dragon Soul raid both take place in modern Azeroth's Dragonblight, with Deathwing and the Old Gods laying siege to Wyrmrest Temple, but are both accessed through the Caverns of Time. Also, for obvious reasons regarding Wrath's content, non-instanced Dragonblight looks exactly the same. To any character it can seem like these two instances are set 20 minutes into Azeroth's future.

 

== Webcomics ==

* ''[[Jonny Quest]]''. It's still set in the present day, but there is futuristic tech, like robots and personal hovercraft, and prototypes like the Parapower Ray Gun. Overlaps with [[Zeerust]] since you can tell by the dated aesthetic, but a lot of the tech featured is still in use or hasn't been made yet, such as the walkie-talkie that basically allows two-way video conferencing.

* ''[[Futurama]]'' pokes fun at this on occasion, in the fact that it takes place 1000 years later, thus the [[Couch Gag]] in the opening title claimed "YOU CAN'T PROVE IT WON'T HAPPEN!". In the first episode, Suicide Booths also had printed on them "since 2008".

** The show itself probably starts in a Twenty Minutes Into the Future setting, what with the [[Nanomachines|nanites]] and all. One episode featured a working space elevator and the flying transports used by Providence use anti-gravity to stay in the air.

 

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[[Category:Settings]]

[[Category:Hollywood History]]

[[Category:Cyberpunk Tropes]]