The Future Is Now

Maybe we need to take stock of where we are at in terms both of reading sf and of 100+ years of publication of sf or, as one of HG Wells' publishers called it, "Fantastic and Imaginative Romances."

In the 1960s, I read sf, including Poul Anderson, and confidently expected to live from the Present into the Future, which would begin in the twenty-first century if not sooner. I would not have been surprised by a Martian invasion. (I had read Wells' The War Of The Worlds although not yet Anderson's The War Of Two Worlds.)

There were four kinds of fictional futures:

(i) spaceships;
(ii) post-World War III survival;
(iii) natural disaster aftermath;
(iv) the day after tomorrow.

Anderson contributed to most categories. I remember (i) Dominic Flandry and (ii) Twilight World and read (iv) Brain Wave later.

The setting of a work in category (iv) is indistinguishable from that of a contemporary novel except that there is perhaps one technological innovation. If the narrative ends by explaining why we have not heard of this innovation yet, then the work can be set today instead of (what I call) "the day after tomorrow." The Time Machine never returns. The Cavorite sphere disappears. In Robert Heinlein's "Lifeline," the baronovitameter/chronovitameter is destroyed and its inventor murdered but the story is set in 1952 which was then the future. In CS Lewis' That Hideous Strength, the National Institute for Coordinated Experiments tries to take over Britain after the War, which was then the future. Brain Wave begins when it was published but then the world is transformed.

So where are we now on Earth Real? This post has been prompted by an editorial comment in a left wing newspaper published today:

"...the future is here.
"For decades people have been predicting that the blind process of capital accumulation would unleash terrible disasters. Now the Australian wildfires and the coronavirus pandemic show that the disasters have begun...
"Corvid-19 is probably an unintended consequence of intensive factory farming."

We have begun our own version of (iii).