The Day After Tomorrow

"Day after tomorrow" sf begins like contemporary fiction, then adds one change, typically perhaps a single technological innovation, although there can also be extraterrestrial incursions, environmental alterations or even human changes. However, the bigger the change, the more quickly the action moves away from a contemporary setting. Thus, Poul Anderson's Brain Wave, about a global increase in intelligence, begins in the author's present but ends in perhaps the most extraordinary of his many fictional futures.

IN CS Lewis' That Hideous Strength, set shortly after World War II, the National Institute of Coordinated Experiments performs secret experiments but is destroyed by a covert extraterrestrial incursion so that the contemporary setting is preserved. This novel concludes a Trilogy.

In Robert Heinlein's "Life Line," set in 1951, Pinero invents and utilizes the "baronovitameter"/"chronovitameter" but he is killed and it is destroyed so that the contemporary setting is preserved. However, in subsequent installments of the Future History, the future intrudes on the present with further technological innovations. (We now live in a future and a twenty first century with numerous innovations: radio; radar; television; color television; computers; personal computers; lap tops; mobile phones; satellites; satnav; space probes; a space station; self-driving cars.)

A "day after tomorrow" story is the perfect beginning for a future history series. We will compare the beginnings of a few future histories.