Five SF Books Set in the Future… of 2020

[james_davis_nicoll]

How did science fiction imagine the world of the 2020s? Let's look at some of the more entertaining predictions and speculations...

Five SF Books Set in the Future… of 2020

Comments

[james_davis_nicoll]

Tor dot com article 514, 2024 article 58.

486 articles to go to article 1000

[oh6]

Genocide enthusiasts may be pleased to know that innovation has not stood still on nuclear weapons in the intervening years, and there may well be designs for (and perhaps warheads built of) ultra-high-yield exoatmospheric enhanced radiation weapons that could deliver a lethal dose of radiation to thousands of square kilometres (or much more - I got this from a Scientific American article from 20+ years ago and I don't remember anything about the possible area, and am mostly going on a line from the 1980 Oppenheimer series) without the mess of fallout, although I imagine the consequences to the usability of near space would be considerable.

[(Anonymous)]

I haven't read the article yet but there's an Arthur C. Clarke story where Moon colonists look at the unattainable Earth, which apparently is still glowing with the radioactivity. with ordinary vision, that must be catastrophic. And why the colony actually is on the far side.

Robert Carnegie

[ba_munronoe]

To continue the entirely lacking in jollytude theme, Stephen King's "The Running Man" is set in 2025, and Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" in 2021. I believe "A Boy and His Dog" was mentioned recently. Not quite sure as to the timeline, but I think the Terminator and wozzisname in the first movie get sent back from 2020 or thereabouts?

On a somewhat more optimistic note, Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy kicks off in 2026, although most of it is set much further into the future.