Writing about the world to come is a scarey suggestion , because nothing becomes disused faster than futurist visions . peculiarly if you ’re write about a X or two from now , your story jeopardy looking ridiculous within a few year . So here are 10 tips to keep your near - future setting from looking too date .
This is definitely an example of an area that I ’ve shinny with in my own committal to writing , and to some extent this list is an opportunity for you to profit from my embarrassing error . But it ’s also draw from the misplay I ’ve take in books , pic and telecasting shows make over the year .
This is in all likelihood the most obvious one , but it ’s still worth mentioning . Stanley Kubrick credibly thought it was a safe wager toinclude Pan - Am prominently in 2001 : A Space Odyssey , but that ’s one of the principal things that makes that motion picture look slightly eldritch , even before you get to the sixties aesthetic still being around 30 - odd old age later . This almost bit me in the arse recently — I was working on a level and had a character talk about rat for electronics at Radio Shack . Between the time I end the tale and got it accepted for issue , it became clear that “ Radio Shack ” might not even be a current reference book a twelvemonth or two from now . ( Sob . )
Not everything is survive to change in the space of a few yr , even though it sometimes feels as though change is happening at an accelerated rate these daytime . We might get driverless car on the streets , but we wo n’t get rid of driver any prison term soon . We might see change in solid food wasting disease wont due to drouth , but hamburgers are n’t going away . The hereafter does n’t finger like the future without a certain amount of cognitive dissonance , but some things are always going to stay the same — until they finally stop being workable , at least . A lot count on find fault changes that seem plausible , using today as a starting point . Which brings us to :
This is the big one . It ’s easy to key the current trendlines , and just envisage them continuing forever — but that does n’t pass off , in real liveliness . Investment booms turn into binge , furor end , and trends twist sidelong all the time . Instead of thinking “ if ten goes on evermore , what will it attend like , ” imagine what five more years of X will lead to , and how that will change things afterwards . Even if the trend continue after that , it will probably keep on in a different way — for exercise , the current feeding frenzy for investing in tech inauguration may still be blend in on five years from now , but there may be more emphasis on picking winners betimes , rather than wager on a great deal of horse . And address of trends …
The only matter you actually jazz will take place in the next 20 years is a generational shift . Today ’s five - yr - olds will be youthful adults , and meanwhile the Baby Boomers will be retiring and pop off off . That , in turn , means that social trends will be shaped more by today ’s toddlers than by the Baby Boomers , and any trend that you spot which is partly mould by Boomer participation may not still be going on . Plus drift are momentary . Another demographic trend to watch : flannel will no longer be a majority in the United States by 2043 .
Bear in mind thatnot all technical variety befall at the precise same charge per unit . We tend to assume that because estimator and related technologies have had an incredible revolution in the past 20 age , all engineering will behave the same way in the next 20 . We’llcure cancer , we ’ll become bionic woman , we ’ll live everlastingly , etc . In fact , computers have been a special case , thanks to Moore ’s Law and some related developments . We are do some awing advances in biotech and inherited medicine , for certain , but we ’re probably not going to solve the most canonical problems of human existence ( like eliminating aging ) in the next generation or so . And nothing looks dated quicker than a close future with unrealistically astonishing onward motion — just look at the legions of 1960s stories that had us colonizing space by the 1990s .
As I mentioned , it ’s not the future without cognitive dissonance — and a certain amount of outlandishness is actually necessary , if anybody ’s going to buy your future as THE time to come . But one direction to make the weirdness feel constituent and not contrive is to create a “ future story ” that chair from the nowadays to your imagined future , in which sealed major tech breakthroughs or societal change lead to a serial publication of ( somewhat ) consistent upshot . ( They ca n’t be all logical , because we ’re talking about people . ) test to reckon the dominos accrue , including second - purchase order personal effects as well as immediate effects . That direction , even if you ’re proved wrong , at least you ’ll have a intellection - out alternating timeline — and alternate population never get former .
In fact , be careful about slang in cosmopolitan . Nothing mark your work out as the product of a bygone geological era more promptly than slang . ( Says the mortal who really wanted to call a report about party girls in space “ YOLO ” andgot talk out of it . ) And actually , using made - up slang can also mark your body of work out as go steady , because even the made - up lingo starts to feel drop anchor to the sentence when it was created , for various reasons . ( Either because it ’s similar to real slang expression from that clock time , or because it ’s just of that era — a lot of 1960s and 1970s SF books contain “ futuristic ” slang that sound incredibly bell - bottomed . )
And likewise , if you invent a new subculture that exists in twenty years , bear in mind that subcultures do n’t just bounce up out of nowhere . They usually emerge from older subculture , or are influence by them at least . Or else , they emerge in response to current societal and ethnic conditions . Also , the more off-the-wall the subculture , the more you necessitate to get inside the heads of its adherents , so that we experience the sense of cohesiveness and the internal logical system that makes them not feel silly wearing shoes on their pass or whatever .
And finally , this is another big one — forecast political shifts is a thankless , damning undertaking . Unless you ’re croak for full - blown satire , sound into item about who the President is and what the political position count like in 2025 may just get you into trouble . Probably best to vague it out — but acquit in judgment the previous Tip O’Neil axiom that “ All politics is local . ” The best elbow room to make your next political situation feel grounded , and not probable to be disproven by actual events , is to focus in on really specific controversies and battles at the local grade , or touch on one radical heavily . Even if you admit national political controversies , keep them petty and trivial ( because not hatmuch will change in 20 or 30 years . ) The good way to keep the shape of your succeeding politics feeling realistic is to make certain it ’s weirdly specific ( and specifically weird . )
Thanks to Annalee Newitz for her help with this one !
get through the source at[email protect ] .
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