Summer blockbuster edition Part One!

Nothing serious, just summer fun – what science fiction thinks should have happened by now.

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The Hunger Games books and movies suppose that in 300 years, the national sport will be watching good-looking teenagers murder each other, while everyone will have forgotten how to grow tomatoes.

Novels and movies of the past – what did they think would have happened by now?

America is a socialist utopia. Industry is owned by the public and managed with great efficiency; there are no shortages of goods or services. People work 15-hour weeks and go home to high-quality housing; on every city block there is an excellent restaurant where anyone may dine free of charge. Any needed goods are ordered by telephone for rapid delivery without cost. There is almost no crime: criminality is understood as a medical condition, a vestige of human evolution, and treated by physicians. 

Where and when did this happen? In Boston, in the year 2000. That’s what is depicted in Looking Backward, by Edward Bellamy, the 1888 book that was the first bestselling sci-fi novel written in the United States.

Looking Backward provides a sunny take compared to a novel in which a horrific global dictatorship locks nations into endless, pointless combat to keep the populace submissive. There is electronic surveillance in every room of every home, workplace and school. You can be arrested for having the wrong expression on your face. People who realize the news is being faked are tortured to death.

Where and when did this happen? In England, in the year 1984. The book of course is Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, published 1949, a dystopian bestseller in what seemed a happy time, just after liberty defeated tyranny in history’s worst war.

There’s a maxim: people overestimate what can be done in the short term, underestimate what can be done in the long term. This seems to hold in past books, movies and TV shows that depicted the future.

Pan Am-owned space station in the year 2001, from the 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Image courtesy MGM.

In Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, released 1968, by the year 2001 there is a city on the Moon, reached by regularly scheduled Pan Am service. A nuclear-propelled spacecraft weighing 5,400 tons (110 times the mass of an Apollo spacecraft) is on its way to Jupiter. A sentient AI runs the ship, with passengers in suspended animation.

What actually happened? No one has stepped on the moon since 1971, the heaviest manmade object sent to Jupiter weighs three tons, and Pan Am went out of business in 1991.

In the first Terminator movie, released 1984, the nuclear war that obliterates most of humanity occurs on August 29, 1997. That must have seemed a long way away in 1984! By 2029, the surviving remnant of humanity invents time travel. So we’ve got five years to get that.

The first Blade Runner, released 1982, depicts Los Angeles in the year 2019. Japanese corporations have taken over America.

Footnote 1: in early the 1980s it was common for Experts to declare the Japanese economy unstoppable, sure to displace the United States. Since then Japan’s GDP has grown 281 percent while America’s GDP has grown 800 percent.

Footnote 2: The United States also was taken over by Japan, in the year 2015, in Back to the Future Part Two, released 1989. The flick’s depiction of 2015 has flying cars being common. The DeLorean gets a “hover converter” hooked up to the flux capacitor.  

The movie poster for Blade Runner, released 1982, depicting 2019. Check the hovercar.

In the Blade Runner Los Angeles of 2019, antigravity cars float by. Climate change has made California cold and wet, not hot and dry as would actually happen. Faster than light battlecruisers have been sent to attack a planet 250 light years away. Intelligent cyborgs are hard to distinguish from actual people.

On The Jetsons, which ran 1962-1963, flying-car enthusiast George Jetson is born in 2022.

In the first of five Riverworld novels, by Philip Jose Farmer, published 1971, some global calamity ends life on Earth in 1983. Everyone who has ever existed reappears on the mysterious Riverworld, and you have to read four more books to find out what the heck is going on.

The Puppet Masters, published 1951, Robert Heinlein’s first hit, is set in 2007. There are flying cars and force fields, plus a crewed spaceship on the way to Saturn to attack the home base of evil space slugs that build flying saucers.

Space 1999, a British ITV series that ran 1975-1977, depicted a large city on the Moon in the year 1999. An explosion knocks the Moon out of orbit and sends it traveling through space. (This would wreak havoc with the oceans.) Soon the Moon begins arriving at distant planets in other star systems – though the transit would take thousands of years.

In Childhood’s End, a 1953 novel by Arthur C. Clarke, during the 1960s ships of an advanced race arrive above Earth. Children have begun to be born with psychic powers: the aliens will guide us as the children ascend to a galactic super-mind, destroying Earth in the process.

Meet George Jetson, born 2022.

The Sleeper Awakes, an 1899 H.G. Wells novel, is set in the year 2100. A man comes out of two centuries of hibernation to find society runs entirely on wind energy and a “babble machine” mesmerizes the populace via a ceaseless barrage of fake news. So… seems we are on track for these predictions to come true sooner than 2100.

In Orwell’s novel, hell on Earth arrives in the year 1984. Hasn’t come true yet but hey, we’re trying!

Dark Angel was a TV series that ran 2000-2002 and loosed Jessica Alba upon the world. In the year 2009 terrorists detonate an EM pulse bomb that destroys all silicon chips. Society returns to a preindustrial existence, as mutated super-soldiers roam the landscape in service of An Agency Far, Far More Secret Than the CIA.

(Note: An Agency Far, Far More Secret Than the CIA is the formal name of the mysterious organization in so many movies and TV shows.)

The first novel of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy, Red Mars, was published in 1992. It has Earth dying from overpopulation in the year 2020, with a Mars colony vessel departing in 2026. Elon, the clock is ticking on building that ship.

Soylent Green, a 1973 hit Charlton Heston movie, has Earth is dying of overpopulation in the year 2022. New York City has 40 million residents, there is a housing shortage (hmm… realistic). There is also a desperate shortage of food (hmm…billions of people are overweight, while global malnutrition has declined pretty much to the day the film was released).

Soylent Green was based on a 1966 sci-fi novel called Make Room! Make Room! that predicted mass starvation would kill most of humanity by the year 1999.

The Enterprise encounters a warp drive vessel launched by the United States in 1997.

Star Trek’s 1967 TV episode Space Seed, which introduced the supervillain Khan Noonien Singh, has the United States achieving FTL space travel in 1997. This is retconned in the 1996 theatrical release Star Trek First Contact, which said warp drive is invented in 2063.

Note: in Star Trek lore, “Khan” is pronounced KHANNNNNNNNNNNNN!

Ray Bradbury’s 1954 short story When the World Ends has Judgment Day arrive on October 19, 1969. God causes everyone to experience a dream that makes people feel calm at the last. Bradbury’s 1953 short story The Veldt depicts an early 21^st century society in which highly realistic electronic simulations are destroying the minds of the young. Hmmm…

The Space Between Us, a 2017 sci-fi romcom, has a Mars colony existing in the year 2018 and sending people back to Earth. Fun fact: a Mars-born person who arrives on Earth is dying because of the higher gravity here. The script says that he must get into zero-gee immediately so NASA PUTS HIM ONTO A ROCKET, exposing him to several more gravities. (For example the Falcon 9 rocket exposes passengers to four times the force of gravity.)  

Travelers, a Netflix sci-fi series that ran 2016-2019, has an asteroid impact causing mass extinction in the year 2020. Three centuries later a handful of survivors invent time travel in order to send people back to 2016, where they use future knowledge to build an X-ray laser that destroys the asteroid before it strikes.

But then there would never be the mass extinction and the future would never – bartender, another round!

Minority Report, a 1956 novel by Philip K. Dick, says that by the year 2000, American government will have the ability see the future. Actual situation: American government cannot predict next week.

Jennifer Connelly on Snowpiercer. Don’t you remember the Earth turning into an snowball in 2014?

Snowpiercer, both a movie and a streaming series, has a catastrophic scientific mistake freeze the Earth into a snowball in the year 2014. Since the movie premiered in 2013, its future at least might happen. The streaming series premiered in 2020, at a time when, how shall we say this, it was known the Earth did not turn into a snowball in 2014.

The premise of Snowpiercer is that the tiny remnant of humanity endlessly circumnavigates the globe aboard a gigantic train pulled by a locomotive that contains a perpetual-motion machine. Okay, assume a perpetual-motion machine. With the human race freezing to death, why was all available capital channeled into building train trestles across the oceans rather than, say, nuclear reactors to make heat?

Released in 1987, the movie Robocop has huge human-robot cyborgs acting as police officers in the year 1991.

Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale, published 1985, has the United States transformed into the Republic of Gilead in the year 2005, with women held as chattel and mandatory execution for adultery or same-gender sex. If there were mandatory execution for adultery, how quickly we’d run out of family-values political candidates.

The reverse of the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. Image courtesy MGM Television.

In Liu Cixin’s Three Body Problem, published 2008, Chinese scientists are in contact with sinister advanced space aliens. Perhaps they advised the CCP to coopt Washington with bribes! In 2022, the aliens announce their intention to invade Earth and wipe humanity out. The aliens announce this, cackling over their plans like a Bond villain.

Actual line from the précis of an episode in the Netflix streaming series based on the novel: “Will's cryogenically frozen brain is launched into space.” 

The original TV series version of Lost in Space ran 1965-1968. Events are set in 1997. Overpopulation is causing civilization to collapse. (Today there are one billion more people than in 1997: poverty and malnutrition have declined.) Warp drive has been invented. The Robinsons depart for Alpha Centauri, and oh no, they get lost!

Lost in Space the big-budget movie, released 1998, is set in 2058. Ozone depletion is making Earth uninhabitable. (Actually the ozone layer recovered, an inconveniently positive story the Washington Post buried at the bottom of page 8.) A hypergate allows instantaneous travel anywhere in the galaxy. The Robinsons depart, and oh no, they get lost!

Lost in Space, the Netflix reboot, ran 2018-2021. This version is set in 2046. Earth is dying because of an asteroid strike. The Robinsons and others depart for Alpha Centauri aboard a mile-long faster than light starship and, oh no, they fall into a wormhole!

In the series finale, it’s 2048 when the Robinsons finally arrive at Alpha Centauri. They behold a huge city built by Americans, powered by a hydroelectric dam and defended by CGI skybeams. Are we really going to build a city in another star system just two decades from now, when NASA hasn’t even put a person on the Moon in 53 years?

Fun fact: the skybeams that defend the space city against evil alien robots have one single password that is known to only one person.

The Boeing Starliner, currently stranded in orbit. But don’t worry, NASA will be building entire cities in deep space soon. Photo courtesy NASA.

In the new Jennifer Lopez sci-fi flick Atlas, the year is 2043 and the bad guy escapes to the Andromeda galaxy, which is 2.5 million light years distant. Jennifer Lopez gives chase and arrives in a couple days. So this movie foresees we’re about to develop spaceships that move at millions of times the speed of light. Yet Boeing’s Starliner is still stuck in orbit!

Don’t take Jennifer Lopez’s word for it, take SNL’s. This 2023 Saturday Night Live sketch is set in the year 2044 in “a far away galaxy.”

Sci-fi Bonus: The procedural series Justified Primeval is about a U.S. marshal seeking a fugitive in present day Detroit.

In one scene the marshal walks down a corridor of a hotel around dawn. The morning newspaper is at every door. That makes the series sci-fi – because newspapers have not been delivered to hotel doors in years. Not in this dimension, anyway.

Next Week -- Summer blockbuster edition Part Two! A grid of all evil space aliens in books and movies.

All Predictions Wrong’s summer blockbuster series will build up to a shocking finale in Part Three!

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