Science fiction and the future: Part one

Hello readers! I’ve been pondering the science fiction genre again – specifically, science fiction stories which are set in our universe, with some connection to our world. I haven’t done a thorough survey, but I get the impression that most science fiction falls into this category, rather than being pure science fantasy. And within this reality-adjacent sub-genre, the overwhelming majority of stories are set in the future. Some are set on Earth, some are set on distant planets – but all of these futuristic tales use characters and technologies that are somehow descended from the world as we know it today.

My question is this: if you’re writing a science fiction story set in the future, how do you decide on the year? A writer must determine whether their fictional society and technology feels more at home a few decades from now, or a few centuries from – maybe even a few millennia. But how do they make that distinction? For a story set in the far future, the years 8,000 and 80,000 might feel equally reasonable – but this won’t always be the case. When does the year become integral to the plot, and when can it be overlooked? Can a poor choice of year ruin a good story?

I’m going to answer these questions across two posts. This week, in part one, we’ll think about the origins of speculative science fiction and the motivations for writing about the future. In part two, hopefully next week, we’ll go through some examples of science fiction stories, old and new, set in the near and far future, and consider whether the choice of year makes any difference to their narratives – and if so, why.

The origins of speculative fiction

Science fiction, and speculative future fiction in general, appear to be relatively modern concepts. The science fiction genre really took off in the late 19th century with the likes of H. G. Wells (War of the Worlds was published in 1898) and Jules Verne (Journey to the Centre of the Earth was published in 1864). We’ve discussed the origins of science fiction before on this blog, and pinpointing the first speculative science fiction novel remains a challenge. However, there are some very early examples, such as Memoirs of the Year 2500 by Louis-Sébastien Mercier, written in 1771, which describes a utopian future with no religion, no wars, and no coffee. Another example is Mary Shelley’s The Last Man, published in 1826, which describes a dystopian future in which humanity is slowly wiped out by a plague, leading to wars and famine around the year 2100.

It’s worth noting that although the terms “utopian” and “dystopian” are typically used to differentiate optimistic and pessimistic branches of speculative science fiction, the original Utopia was a book written by Thomas More in 1516 – and it was not set in the future, but on a distant island. Writing about the future didn’t become popular until centuries later: almost all books written before 1800 were set in the present or the past.

Speculative fiction is fuelled by uncertainty

It seems to me that speculative science fiction only became possible when the rate of technological advancement became fast enough for people to notice changes within their lifetime. In the 19th century, we reached a tipping point: the timescale of technological growth became shorter than the timescale of a human life. For the first time, ordinary people could see that the technology they were using far outstripped the technology used by their ancestors, or by their parents, or eventually, by their younger selves. A trend which had previously been invisible was suddenly clear enough to be appreciated by everyone – and as soon as this trend was established, people started to speculate where it would go next.

Consider a medieval peasant. There was no change in technology during their life. Indeed, there hadn’t been a significant shift in technology throughout their parents’ or grandparents’ lives, either. Instead, there was a general sense of constancy – of everything being the same as it ever was. If you were writing a story, you would set it in the world that you knew, and that your grandparents knew, and that your children would go on to know. Tales started “once upon a time”, which – by definition – made them timeless. Any speculation involved faraway lands and people, rather than faraway futures. Because why would a story set in the future look any different to a story set in the present?

Now consider a writer in 1890. The steam engine had been developed in 1765. Railways had started being built in 1804, and steam powered boats had entered waterways in 1807. People were travelling further and faster than ever before – the UK industrial revolution was being powered by steam. Photographs had been invented in 1826. The first telegraph had been sent in 1844. The first telephone call had been made in 1876 – the same year that the internal combustion engine had been developed. Electric lighting had arrived in 1879. The first car had hit the road in 1885. Over the course of one lifetime, the world had changed dramatically, and the pace of progress was only increasing. Anyone would wonder what the world might look like for their children, or for their children’s children. Where the future had once been mundane, suddenly, it was open for speculation.

Reasons to write about the future

The purpose of any speculative fiction is to exercise the imagination, either as a means to temporarily escape reality, or to better understand it by examining certain aspects through a different lens. Much of Jules Verne’s work involved grand adventures supported by fantastical technology in alien landscapes, providing readers with exciting, escapist romps, rather than philosophical dissections of human nature. By contrast, H. G. Wells used future technology as a means to explore social and political themes: The Time Machine (1895) has more adventurous elements, but The Sleeper Awakes (1910), gets much more political, with the protagonist waking up in 2100 to find that his savings have accrued so much interest that he is the richest man in the world – and that his wealth has been used to establish a fascist world order.

Over the years, speculative science fiction has become less adventurous and much more depressing. Nowadays, you’re much less likely to encounter stories of the “futuristic submarine goes to magical lands under the sea” variety than you are to encounter stories of the “futuristic submarine destroys the marine ecosystem and causes untold damage to the trout population” variety. The speculative science fiction genre is full of cautionary tales, warning us of impending disaster. These tales are either written as public service announcements, trying to alert people to potential dangers, or they are written as a form of therapy, helping us come to terms with worries of the future. Some of them are philosophical enough to feel borderline academic.

The key point here is that the purpose of a story – for example, whether the writer intends it to be an escapist fantasy or a harrowing premonition – will often determine the year in which it is set. If you want to write an escapist fantasy, you have to look to the medium or distant future, where humans have colonised other planets, or Earth looks completely different. If you want to write a harrowing premonition, you need to have tangible, emotional links to the present-day, which limits you to the near or intermediate future. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, of course – and we’ll come back to some examples in the second part of this post.

Choosing a year

The exact year in which a story takes place might not be the first consideration in the development of a science fiction story. It seems unlikely (though not impossible) that a writer would pick a random year, then use this as a starting point for their worldbuilding. Instead, the characters and worldbuilding will probably materialise first, with the year only being determined once the major technologies and fictional histories are in place. It is up to the author to decide how their futuristic world connects to the present day – and this choice reveals a lot about their outlook. The year allows the reader to infer whether the writer was an optimist or a pessimist, or whether they had any grasp of technological advancement at all.

A poor choice of year can be devastating for a writer’s credibility and the world they created. The success of a science fiction story often hinges on the strength of its worldbuilding, and this can all come tumbling down if readers deem the choice of year to be inappropriate. Mars colonies in 2030? Stupid. People wearing jeans in 12,500? Stupid. Humans still existing in 850,000? Stupid.

Some audience members might not care at all, of course. But for others, scientific inaccuracies will leave them scowling and grumbling, eventually causing them to join lengthy Reddit discussion threads, create coldly analytical YouTube videos, or write incensed blog posts (guilty, your honour). For some, the mere suggestion that a protagonist in 2032 might use a Betamax cassette for data transfers will leave them screaming into a pillow. Personally, I find that these sorts of inaccuracies can be quite endearing in the right circumstances – but if the entire point of a story is to be scientifically or politically relevant, then miscalculations such as these can cause irreparable damage to the narrative foundations.

Reputation and relevancy

The choice of year reveals a lot about the writer’s personality, as well as the cultural zeitgeist at the time of writing. Nobody can imagine a future world to 100% accuracy (if they could, they wouldn’t be wasting their time writing books), so, if a writer knows that their predictions are certain to be proven wrong, do they want future readers to view them as hopeless optimist, a hopeless pessimist, or a hopeless idiot? Do they want to make it obvious that they wrote the book at a particular time in history, or do they want to hide the book’s age?

The key question here is how much the writer cares about being wrong. If they care too much, they probably won’t risk writing science fiction in the near future – in fact, they might abandon our universe altogether and write some science fantasy instead. Reputational risk increases with proximity to the present day: if you set a novel in 2030, your readers are likely to live long enough to debunk your imagined future, whereas if you set a novel in 2100, it’s highly improbable that anyone will bother comparing your predictions to reality. Still, setting a novel in the far-future doesn’t necessarily make it future-proof. You might write a story about a distant human colony in 8030, but if humanity gets wiped out next Thursday, and you end up being the last person alive, you will be forced to admit that you got it wrong. Although this might be the last thing on your mind…

In most cases, however, being wrong doesn’t matter as much as being relevant. If a writer locks their story to a specific year which then passes, their work evolves. It becomes a historical artefact, rather than an exciting prediction, and it instead serves to encapsulate the hopes and fears of a very specific time window. There are plenty of science fiction books written in the 1950s and 60s that predict colonies on the Moon and Mars by the turn of the century. Now, in 2025, we look back at these stories and view them as naively optimistic, underestimating the looming economic pressures and public apathy towards space exploration. We can no longer read these stories in the way that the authors intended. Instead, they have turned from adventurous space romps into sobering, mournful reminders of a future that never was, and of an optimism that has slowly been crushed from existence. These works have historic and cultural value, but their authors are often viewed as products of their time, rather than visionaries or geniuses. There are some timeless classics out there, but they are few and far between – and we’ll discuss them further in part two.

Can you just play it safe? Don’t specify the year!

If you really wanted to avoid upsetting your audience or damaging your reputation, you could always switch to the genre of science fantasy. Set your story a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, and nobody can complain about scientific inaccuracy (they can just complain about everything else). These stories can become timeless, just as traditional fantasy stories can become timeless. But they often serve a different purpose to speculative science fiction, and certain ideas are not transferable between the two genres.

Another option is to leave the year unspecified – and at first glance, this might seem like a good way to avoid being proven wrong, and to provide a bit more wiggle-room when it comes to relevancy. A world which looks vaguely futuristic? Could be 2050, could be 2200? Great – nobody needs to go trawling through the Wikipedia page on Moore’s law to determine the level of inaccuracy!

However, the writers rarely get off the hook that easily. The inclusion of certain technologies (such as the aforementioned Betamax) will always tie the futuristic setting back to the year in which it was written. Some writers manage to conjure a world so far removed from our own that it is barely recognisable – but most don’t. Most writers will include devices that are basically phones but aren’t called phones, or drinks that are basically coffee but aren’t called coffee. They might not specify the year, or even the century, but their vision of the future can still end up feeling dated.

But perhaps it doesn’t matter.

For some stories, the year in which they are set is insignificant. All the inconsistencies can be overlooked. The retro technology can be given a free pass. Even the blatant scientific inaccuracies can be excused. Some stories are just so profound that they have become timeless – even in cases where the year is literally the title (yes, I’m talking about 1984).

Sometimes, the narrative is all that matters, and the science fiction setting only provides a stylish backdrop. If Shakespeare had set Romeo and Juliet in a Mars colony in 3045, the plot would remain largely unchanged. Whether we lay our scene in Venus or Verona, the tale of forbidden love is unrelentingly relatable, putting it beyond the grasp of time.

This distinction is key to answering our original question. If the story is about human nature – about love, trust or revenge – then it might not matter when it is set. But if the story revolves heavily around specific technologies, and verges towards being a cautionary public service announcement, then the timing is crucial.

In summary…

Nobody can predict the future. But a poor choice of year for science fiction set in the future can sometimes undermine the narrative. Audiences are likely to be particularly harsh on newly-released media, as they expect the outlook of the writer to match their own. If you’re writing far-future stories, the world needs to look very different from the one we know today: you can’t present a world in the year 850,000 where every building interior looks like an Apple store, or your audience will get annoyed. Conversely, if you’re writing near-future science fiction, the connections to the present must be believable: you can’t present a world in the year 2032 with a fully functioning Mars mining colony.

When it comes to old fiction, audiences are kinder – but they won’t necessarily read these works in the way the author intended. Outdated science fiction becomes a window to the past, rather than the future, neatly fossilising the outlook of the era in which it was written. Only a few books escape this fate; their themes are so compelling that the precise year doesn’t matter. We’ll have a look at some of these timeless classics in the next post, and determine whether the choice of year has any influence over their staying power.

Happy reading, and have a lovely week!