The Future



All Wiki Words are capitalized, but pretend that is even more capitalized.

The Future is typically 200–1000 years after the present time, but there are no real set limits, and Twenty Minutes Into the Future has been popular at times. The Future differs from A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far Far Away by the presence of Earth—whether the show is set in San Francisco or whether Earth is a distant legend, there are always ties to Earth that make it significant in the show.

Most books of advice to aspiring authors insist that Space Opera should be set at least several thousand years in the future, based on just how much civilization would have to develop to make such things possible, but TV shows rarely go anything like that far ahead, partly to justify showing an Earth-based society that isn't so radically different that the viewers can't relate at all, but mostly because Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale. (Although really, who can predict these things?) A relatively near-future Space Opera setting can be justified by having ancient civilizations already out in space and humanity a relative newcomer to the galactic stage, which has the bonus of being able to fit in Expospeak as aliens explain what's going on to the ignorant human barbarians.

The Future is where much of "hard" science fiction takes place. The various Star Treks are set here, as are Babylon 5, Buck Rogers In The 25th Century, Firefly, you name it.

In The Future everything might get worse or better (The Future Will Be Better).

Anime and Manga

 * All Gundam shows take place in the future, some further ahead than others.
 * Guilty Crown is set in 2039, where a mysterious virus known as "Apocalypse Virus" is spreading. It does, however, blend over with traditional fantasy at times, as the protagonist is able to draw out people's personalities to use them as weapons. Some are more useful than others, though. This power also becomes the cause of some literal Fridge Brilliance, in episode 3.
 * Aria takes place in the 24th Century on the planet Aqua, formerly known as Mars before terraforming transformed it into a water-covered paradise.
 * One of the oneshots in the manga Robot: Super Color Comic takes place in The Future. It's not known how far into the future however humans have long since began living in tall towers, one of the protagonists has apparently never seen wild birds, Sailor Fuku are no longer worn, and crepes have apparently changed in style (if they aren't nonexistent).

Comic Books

 * In the DC Universe, The Legion of Super Heroes live 1000 years in The Future of The DCU.
 * In the DC Comics Crisis Crossover DC One Million, half of the story takes place in the 853rd century (farther into the future than any other previous DC story, not counting the ones involving the End of Time). A highly detailed setting was created for this in which the entire solar system has gotten terraformed into Earthlike worlds, the whole human race has telepathic access to the Internet, and most amazing of all, descendants of DC's greatest heroes are STILL active!
 * Transmetropolitan.
 * The Warlord of Io" graphic novel is set in the year 2853 A.D., shortly before the fabulous year 3000 of Rocket Robin Hood fame.

Film

 * Idiocracy undermines the popular ideas about the future. Life does not get better, nor do we have an After the End scenario. Instead, selective breeding for stupidity has caused The Future to be actually much worse than the present, but not in a Mad Max way. The idea came from the '50's short story "The Marching Morons" by C.M. Kornbluth, which did not receive a credit.
 * Mr. Nobody takes place in 2092, which is fairly utopian in that senescence and death have been eliminated through medical technology. The titular protagonist is, at age 118, the last "mortal" human.

Literature

 * Isaac Asimov's Empire-Foundation novels take place in a galactic civilization so old that concepts like the laws of thermodynamics are considered to be "prehistoric" in origin. The origin of the human species is unknown; characters speculate on which part of the galaxy the oldest settlements are in, and some scientists propose that humans evolved independently on thousands of different worlds. Earth does eventually turn out to be the home of the human race, but this never becomes common knowledge.
 * David Brin's Uplift series features elements of the Stupid Newbie Humans version of 'near-future' (within this millennium) space opera.
 * Hyperion is set in the 2700s, after the farcaster system has allowed human habitation on many planets across the galaxy

Live Action TV

 * Firefly took place in the early 26th century (the pre-title montage indicates "2517 A.D.") in which Earth (known to everyone as Earth-That-Was) was stripped of all resources in a mass exodus to terraformed planets outside the solar system.
 * Babylon 5 is set in the 2250 and 2260s.
 * Star Trek of course, where Humans Are Special—so special in fact that they've created the United Federation of Planets with Earth as the capital planet which (as far as the residents of the federation are concerned) is a near perfect society.
 * Doctor Who has frequently delved into Earth's future, all the way to a hundred trillion years on, during which time the universe faces imminent collapse. It tends to show it as fairly or sometimes decidely Dystopian. (With Whoniverse not exactly set into stone, though, the series has shown some fairly contradictory visions of the future which include two contradictory accounts of Earth's ultimate destruction. For the record, it supposedly happens in seven million years time. Though other stories place it at five billion years from now.) Torchwood regular and Who expatriate Captain Jack Harkness comes from approximately the year 5000.
 * Retconned by the presence of the Time War. Apparently it caused a lot of really, really screwy stuff to happen to the timeline.

Tabletop Games

 * Warhammer 40,000 is set in the grim darkness of the far future (the 41st Millennium, to be precise), where there is only war.
 * But no range finders (only available to a select group of religious fundies), laser designators (Only the Tau have them), or close in air support, just war.

Video Games

 * ''Battlefield 2142 is set from 2139-2145.
 * Halo The main trilogy takes place in 2552.
 * Bungie's other FPS trilogy, Marathon is set in 2794.
 * Metroid uses an alternate calendar, but it's pretty obvious.
 * Xenosaga The human race switched to TC (Transend Christ) in 2510. The first game itself takes place in the year 4767, or A.D. 7277.
 * Xenogears takes place in A.D. 17276-17277, on a distant planet.
 * Mass Effect takes place in A.D. 2183-2185. The relative closeness to the present day is a result of discovering Applied Phlebotinum on Mars, soon followed by the formation of the Systems Alliance and encountering the Citadel Council, both events resulting in humanity making technological leaps that otherwise wouldn't have come about for centuries, if at all.
 * It's still close enough to the present, though, that present-day pop culture and religion remain intact—mention is made, for instance, of "Old Yeller: The Centennial Remastered Edition".
 * In A.D. 2101, War Was Beginning.
 * The backstory to Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri has Earth sending out the colony ship to Alpha Centauri in 2060, with a 40-year travel time that lands you on Planet in 2100. A normal game (assuming you don't go for the Zerg Rush) will typically last you into at least the 23rd century, with games lasting to the 24th and 25th hardly being pretty standard. During this time, you can research all kinds of cool technology, almost all of it being based on Hard Science well-documented to be possible as of the creation of the game (1997).
 * F-Zero is set in the 26th Century.
 * One of the time periods in Chrono Trigger is 2300 A.D., 301 years after Lavos emerged and pretty much ruined the world. You can also visit 1999 A.D., but there's not much to do besides attempt to prevent the apocalypse. The "present" year in Chrono Trigger is 1000 A.D., for comparison.
 * Asura's Wrath doesn't have a specific time, but much of it takes place thousands, if not Millions, of years into the future.
 * Call of Duty Black Ops 2 has levels set in 2025, and flashbacks set in the 1980s.

Web Comics

 * Ronin Galaxy: Although no specific date is given, the author refers to the setting as the "distant future." The reader is also clearly surrounded by Japanese culture, yet no actual nationalities or ethnic groups are named. Cecil wasn't born in Japan, he's from "The Moon" (AKA Japan in space.)
 * Schlock Mercenary is set in the 31st century.

Web Original

 * The Orion's Arm universe is set over ten thousand years into the future. The intervening years are covered in the timeline in a fair amount of detail, and Earth is more or less a wildlife preserve/ historical landmark.
 * The League of Intergalactic Cosmic Champions was set here.

Western Animation

 * Futurama takes place in the year 3000. New York is in ruins (with a new city, called New New York, built over it), a destroyed pizzeria is part of a museum display, talking heads reside in jars, the Internet is an actual world, robots run on alcohol, and killing oneself is as easy as going to a suicide machine, among others. Interestingly, Fry seems to settle in The Future easily enough.
 * The Jetsons, with the cities floating over a generally unseen landscape. It's basically a transplanted sit-com which includes the Flying Car and Videophones, and where everything has a "space-", "moon-", "rocket-" or the like prefix, and people go to the moon and beyond as casually as we'd get on a plane.
 * "Aeon Flux", though no real time is indicated, and the setup itself seems to change episode to episode.
 * Batman Beyond takes place mainly in 2039. The prologue of the first episode takes place in 2019.
 * Transformers Animated is set in the 22nd century (the exact date is never given).
 * Adventure Time supposedly takes place 1000+ years from our time, so it's somewhere in the 3000's.

other

 * a large amount of "Future" Science fiction has been made that would occur around now. Or, in other words, The Future is now.