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Twenty Minutes Into the Future: Difference between revisions
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* Joe Haldeman admits that setting his novel ''[[The Forever War]]'', about a deep space war to start in the far-off future of 1996, was silly in retrospect, and was done mainly so that the non-coms could be Vietnam veterans. He told any objectors to just "think of it as a parallel universe."
* The ''Dirk Pitt'' series of novels by Clive Cussler are usually set a year or two into the future, with the United States switching to metric and super A.I. computers with hot chick holograms.
* Any time [[Robert A. Heinlein]]'s predictions didn't happen, it was an alternate timeline. He was fair in this, too, in that there were also timelines for the worlds of [[Edgar Rice Burroughs]], [[E. E. "Doc" Smith]], and others. Interestingly, he ''did'' predict a few things accurately, like waterbeds and the rise of the Christian Right. Though perhaps the best one was ''[[Stranger in
** Heinlein invented the waterbed as a concept. That prevented it from being patented. He makes an amusing comment about it in his brick-sized diatribe ''Expanding Universe'' from 1980.
** The themes in the book extrapolated heavily from the 1950s "[[The Beat Generation|Beat Generation]]" subculture, which was the precursor to the counterculture movements of the '60s and early '70s. Its "Church of All Worlds" was based on elements of the neo-pagan/"New Age" mystery religions which were gaining popularity among disaffected youth of the time. Heinlein himself wrote that the book "could not be published commercially until the public mores changed. I could see them changing and it turned out that I had timed it right." Many prominent figures of the counterculture would refer to ''Stranger in a Strange Land'' as a major influence on their thinking and philosophy, particularly the aspects of free love, communalism, and social liberation. Beyond merely predicting the counterculture, the book helped to create it.
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* ''[[Jonny Quest]]''. It's still set in the present day, but there is futuristic tech, like robots and personal hovercraft, and prototypes like the Parapower Ray Gun. Overlaps with [[Zeerust]] since you can tell by the dated aesthetic, but a lot of the tech featured is still in use or hasn't been made yet, such as the walkie-talkie that basically allows two-way video conferencing.
* ''[[Futurama]]'' pokes fun at this on occasion, in the fact that it takes place 1000 years later, thus the [[Couch Gag]] in the opening title claimed "YOU CAN'T PROVE IT WON'T HAPPEN!". In the first episode, Suicide Booths also had printed on them "since 2008".
*
** The show itself probably starts in a Twenty Minutes Into the Future setting, what with the [[Nanomachines|nanites]] and all. One episode featured a working space elevator and the flying transports used by Providence use anti-gravity to stay in the air.
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