Editorial – November 2025: The Future Is Not Set.

Hello everyone,

Let’s hope the word police aren’t watching my editorials after my story, ‘Blind Evidence’, last month. The world is still unsettled, but we need to have a look at the future, or rather dated futures, in science fiction.

MSN frequently suggests future film dates, often incorrectly predicting settings that we have already passed, which means those dates were never our future. Duh! Of course, ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ always comes up, far more than its sequel, ‘2010’. In some respects, the film was more advanced than our current capabilities for manned flights to Jupiter, but in other details, it did not fully align with what we have today.

Back in 1968, when the film came out, the turn of the century, 2001, seemed a long time away, but, in Kubrick’s eyes, it was the next century and something to hang the story from. It also meant he saw a future where he agreed with Arthur C. Clarke that space travel was a regular occurrence. Major events tend to happen at the turn of the century.

Remember the reaction to the Y2K virus messing up computers’ ability to keep time and messing up software in general? Fortunately, this never occurred. It did tend to work against itself, as there was no reference that Heywood Floyd’s trip to the Moon alone wasn’t normal. An embargo on American flights to the orbital space wheel seemed a bit crazy. It would have made more sense for there to be a full passenger flight, with only Floyd continuing on to the Moon, as his presence would have been more significant. These days, you would think a team would have gone with him rather than a solo flight, which would have drawn more attention.

Aside from that, people like dates to hang by. Look at historical dates and how you remember what is associated with them. Well, in my day they were. The same cannot be said for today’s schoolchildren. The issue is that the details often become unclear after the initial events; for example, the Hundred Years’ War actually lasted about 80 years instead of a full century. World War Two didn’t actually end where it did because people forgot the fighting in Burma, which went on a bit longer. I’m just giving these as examples of events linked to dates and how they are remembered rather than a history lesson that they didn’t.

It wasn’t always done that way. In books, not just in SF, they would indicate the century, i.e., e.g., ‘19—’, so the story would remain ageless, or you could put in your own date. These days, it is easy to distinguish between different times based solely on the technology depicted; however, back then, who would have imagined mobile phones or flat-screen tablet TVs? Well, that was something Kubrick was accurate about.

You might expect that future science fiction stories would not face such issues, except for time travel, which necessitates providing a date in films to help viewers understand how far into the future the story takes place. Subtly, there is a subliminal message about how quickly the future could change for the worse. The only problem is that what might seem like a long time in the future catches up to us because we live through those ages.

People want a specific date to reference. ‘Back To The Future II’ includes the joke about ‘Jaws 19 3D’, suggesting that the shark films will continue indefinitely; however, only 2015 has passed, and the ‘Jaws’ series never reached that point. Considering the number of other film series that have gone on far longer these days, it opens up the choice, although it’s an in-joke for the viewer that some things don’t change. The film primarily serves to provide viewers with references to what has remained unchanged or continued over time. A film made much later would choose a different set of relatable anchors and another date that we would no doubt pass. Eventually, the film footage will be adaptable enough to incorporate more recent joke connections.

Is it appropriate to avoid using future dates in film, TV, or science fiction books, knowing they will be used and ridiculed when predictions don’t come true? This is the point of this editorial. I believe no one can predict when a first contact with an alien will happen, not in a specific year, decade, or century, because the predicted date will pass without it occurring. This view often ignores that the story’s point is how we react or what the characters do.

The dates are less important and more akin to seeing the trees and not the forest. It’s also likely that the individuals compiling these lists are not ardent fans of science fiction but rather aficionados who could identify a different aspect to compare if they possessed more knowledge. SF lists rarely highlight SF’s successes or adoptions. For example, Waldos is often overlooked. Moreover, it portrays SF fans negatively, suggesting that the past is the only aspect we focus on in our genre. The focus should be on the story, not the future date.

The geek aspect of our lives means we look at detail, and we speak loudly when we find it wrong or missing when the real knowledge is inaccurate. Much of the time it’s because whoever did the piece of work we are looking at didn’t do their homework correctly. It’s how we tell the difference between SF and Sci-Fi. A lot of the time it’s tolerated simply because it can’t be changed, like CE3K’s map co-ordinates aren’t actually at Devil’s Tower, and you would have thought Spielberg of all people would have used the real co-ordinates. It isn’t like the Devil’s Tower wasn’t already a tourist attraction even in 1978.

From a viewer perspective, we watch the film without looking at that detail, as there’s just an assumption it was correct. It’s enough to know that a set of co-ordinates was used. We might criticise for not using the correct co-ordinates, but I suspect that Columbia, the studio, was probably covering their own backs even if they do belong to a farm and people wouldn’t look at it. Then again, who in their right mind would look up a trivial piece of information in a film that would, at most, be reshown a few times on television and forgotten after a few years? Even film studios aren’t soothsayers when it comes to predictions.

Generally, though, we science fiction fans can enjoy our stories, be they fiction, film or TV, without putting them under a fine comb and then thinking later about some point that needs further interpretation.

Thank you, have a good night, and remember to focus on the important details.

 

Geoff Willmetts

editor: www.SFCrowsnest.info

A Zen thought: Did you get mine?

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Observation: I’m always puzzled by horror film serial killers. I mean, when did actor Bill Shatner wear a hockey mask so it was used as a disguise?

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Feeling Stressed: There’s always tomorrow.