19,068

I find interesting interfaces between mainstream fiction and sf. A contemporary novel assumes technology that was sf in our lifetimes and even recently. An author setting a novel a few years ago must avoid anachronistically referring to tech that exists now but did not exist then. Contemporary fiction can refer to Cavor and Bedford as fictional characters but also to Armstrong and Aldrin as historical figures.

A contemporary novel can refer to the future:

"'God doesn't care about time, Sandy. He's outside it. As far as He's concerned a call to celibacy is a call to celibacy whether it's 1968, 968 or 19,068.'"

-Susan Howatch, Mystical Paths (London, 1996), PART ONE, SIX, X, p. 209.

 

- but cannot tell us what is happening in 19,068! (Howatch combines contemporary fiction with theology and references to trans-temporal consciousness.)

 

So what will happen in 19,068? We do not know, of course, but we can consult alternative fictional timelines. The last entry in the Chronology of Technic Civilization is dated 7100 so we do not know what happens after that. However, in the Time Patrol timeline, time travel begins in 19352 A.D., only 284 years after that last date casually mentioned by Howatch's character who, of course, has no conception either of a galactic civilization or of travel between 1968, 968 and 19,068. For all of that, we must consult Poul Anderson and his colleagues.