Blade Runner timeline

[Danny McG]

'Blade Runner' Timeline Has Been Reached

 

[Frost Giant]

Too soon, I'm still practicing my origami unicorn.

 

[Harpo]

And now it's 2019, the year of Blade Runner, and Akira, and others.

We should create a SFF Timelines thread to cover all the eventualities

 

[Al Jackson]

And now it's 2019, the year of Blade Runner, and Akira, and others.

We should create a SFF Timelines thread to cover all the eventualities

I remember watching Blade Runner in 1982 and thinking "Nope! LA will NOT look like this on our world line in November of 2019"!
I don't know why Hollywood does this , it is like a wimp out on placing things in the future.
I am not sure LA would look like this in 2100 but , for me, it sure would have felt more viable as a time stamp.

Anyway, like 2001 Blade Runner has passed into an alternate universe like so many other SF films.

 

[Al Jackson]

Some of the things 'predicted' were way off scale. Synthetic Humans , the Androids of the basic novel, we may never see Androids, off-world colonies , that is likely 100 years away even if there is human presence off Earth this century, no flying cars …. Blade Runner 2049 pushed things to another universe even more by implying FTL Interstellar Flight , man!, that's not going to happen in less than 500 years.

SF authors of prose used another ploy when writing Future Fiction, give no date at all! .... works find as a story telling device.

 

[Harpo]

No flying cars?

 

[Rodders]

Nor the fashion either. Thanks God.

 

[farntfar]

If you set a story in 4005, it may as well be 15005.
But stories set 40 or 50 years in the future always have the possibility of readers actually living that long.

Back when these stories were written, the idea of "in 40 years time but on a different timeline" was pretty meaningless.
Now it all seems perfectly reasonable, mainly because of the need to explain away continuity errors in Star Trek movies.

 

[Al Jackson]

If you set a story in 4005, it may as well be 15005.
But stories set 40 or 50 years in the future always have the possibility of readers actually living that long.

Back when these stories were written, the idea of "in 40 years time but on a different timeline" was pretty meaningless.
Now it all seems perfectly reasonable, mainly because of the need to explain away continuity errors in Star Trek movies.

Back in the 1950s when I was first reading science fiction with FTL interstellar flight most those stories were set 200, 300 sometimes 10,000 years in the future. It did not bother me one bit that I would not live long enough to see it.
I did appreciate that , say, Robert Heinlein, could build a future that felt lived-in, that was moments of transport for me , so fun.
My sense of things even now with science fiction that has a lot of advanced technology, large scale space flight, really strong AI , synthetic humans, interstellar flight.... so on... the world building feels more viable if it is set far enough ahead, 300 years say, that it feels like it is feasible.

 

[Harpo]

Whenever I ponder on what might seem impossible now but could perhaps be reality in N years time, I think back N years to the past and consider what people then might have speculated about today's world. 300 years is fine and dandy for FTL travel etc, given that 300 years ago we'd only just invented the steam engine, and cameras were still over a century from being invented.

 

[Al Jackson]

Whenever I ponder on what might seem impossible now but could perhaps be reality in N years time, I think back N years to the past and consider what people then might have speculated about today's world. 300 years is fine and dandy for FTL travel etc, given that 300 years ago we'd only just invented the steam engine, and cameras were still over a century from being invented.

It is the scale of technology that becomes the factor. The basic engineering physics of the steam engine had been known since ancient times. It is interesting that when enough knowledge had accumulated it did not take a long time to evolve sophisticated steam engines.
FTL is a different fish. One is too span interstellar distances which range from 100s to millions to billions to more characteristic solar system size or about 40 AU.
The physics of a traversable wormhole seems to allow FTL , but Lord!, the engineering physics involved is beyond comprehension. It is impossible to guess how long it will take to assemble the parts.
Some science fiction has imagined that 'traversable' wormholes exist naturally , Heinlein effectively did this in 1953! in the novel Star Man Jones , boy that one is unusual. I think others, seem to remember in The Forever War 'wormholes' were found for 'jumps' , other SF writers used this idea.
Still the technology is not around the corner in even 100 years , 300 would be super optimistic …….same is true for the Acubierre drive.

 

[J-WO]

It's basically an alternative history story now. I like the way 2045 ran with that and there's adverts for extinct companies and the Soviet Union and the like.

 

[Al Jackson]

It's basically an alternative history story now. I like the way 2045 ran with that and there's adverts for extinct companies and the Soviet Union and the like.

Yeah it was noticeable that Blade Runner 2049 embraced that it was an alternative universe.