A General Fictional Future

Genre science fiction has generated a general image of the future with humanity becoming used to interplanetary, then extrasolar, travel and colonization, followed by civilization on an interstellar and even a galactic scale. More often than not, the still highly questionable premise of faster than light travel is routinely assumed. None of this is exactly happening to schedule. Regular interplanetary travel is taking decades to get off the ground with Earth meanwhile accelerating toward an sf disaster scenario.

The following passages parallel each other albeit in different fictional scenarios:

"By the uncertain dawn of the fifth millennium, Earth's far-flung children had all but forgotten her. The cradle-world had become 'less a planet and a population than a dream.'"

-Sandra Miesel, interstitial passage IN Poul Anderson, The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume I (Riverdale, NY, July 2018), p. 194.

"There were many corners of the galaxy which knew Earth only as a legend, a green myth floating unknown parsecs away in space, known and ineluctable thousands of years away in history."

-James Blish, Earthman, Come Home IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 235-465 AT PROLOGUE, p. 241.

And in the sf sub-genre of superheroes:

"...the career of Kal-El, the waif from a lost world, passed from the realm of legend into myth...the memory of Superman has passed from reverence to ritual...and in the dawning days of the sixtieth century...across the galaxy tonight, wherever the human race has made its home, families gather..."

-Elliott Maggin, Superman 400 (New York, 1984), p. 43, panels 1-2, p. 46, panel 3.