Tag Archives: sf

2024, according to Science Fiction

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As in previous years, I’ve searched for SF set in the year to come so that we will be forewarned of what lies in wait for us. (This has not always proved to be an accurate guide: cf 2020.) This is a relatively thin year, to be honest, but I have a dozen or so film, TV, books and a video game, all set in the year 2024. Here is my complete compilation:

I should add that I have a cutoff of twenty years earlier, so I’m not counting anything released or published since 2004 here. This does lead to a couple of gaps…

Most notoriously, Star Trek: The Next Generation predicted Irish reunification in 2024, in the episode “The High Ground”. The scene was cut when the story was first shown on British TV, and the whole episode was skipped when the series was first shown on Irish TV.

Anyway, chronologically the first is Beyond the Time Barrier, a 1960 film produced by and starring Robert Clarke, a USAF test pilot who discovers that he has flown into a dystopian future, the year 2024, where a cosmic plague has devastated humanity and the sterile remnants cower underground. Our hero is asked to breed with the only young woman who remains fertile. I will leave it to your imagination to guess what happens next.

In a 1964 episode of TV show The Outer Limits “The Invisible Enemy”, the first humans to land on Mars in 2021 mysteriously disappear; three years later, a rescue mission captained by Adam West (better known as Batman) comes to investigate and finds a breathable atmosphere and sand monsters.

Harlan Ellison’s notorious dystopia, A Boy and his Dog (novella 1969, film 1975) is definitely set in 2024 – the original novella says that it is 76 years after 1948, and the film bigs up the date in promotional posters, indeed 2024 is part of the title in some translations. Again our protagonist is invited to breed with one of the few remaining fertile women after the apocalypse; she does not get a happy ending.

Norman Macrae, the deputy chief editor of the Economist, published The 2024 Report: A Concise History of the Future, 1974-2024 in 1984. (And seems to have produced a revised edition called The 2025 Report the following year; see here.) He forecast the fall of the Berlin Wall and of Communism in the late 1980s, an a boom in technology leading to the withering away of the state and a new era of enlightened discourse. If only. (You can get it here, at a price.

Highlander II: The Quickening (1991) is set in 2024; yet another dystopia in which humanity has screwed up the atmosphere and our hero needs to put things right. It is the sequel to a much better film from five years earlier. As someone very wise once put it, there should have been only one!

Also from 1991, in Allen Steele’s novel Lunar Descent the workers on an industrial colony on the Moon go on strike to hit back at management. Like The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, but more genuinely left-wing. You can get it here.

And again from 1991, the anime Silent Möbius: The Motion Picture is mainly set in 2028 but starts with a flashback to 2024 where the policewoman hero first encounters the monster at the core of the plot.

Octavia E. Butler’s classic Parable of the Sower (1993) is, I’m afraid, yet another dystopia where society is collapsing due to climate change and growing inequality. Butler’s teenage protagonist revives her community through a new religion. The story starts in 2024. The graphic novel version won the Hugo in 2021. (You can get the novel here and the graphic version here.)

In 1995, Star Trek Deep Space Nine visited 2024 California in the two-part story “Past Tense”. It turns out that the time-slipped crew have arrived on the eve of historically notorious riots in a deeply divided society. (Incidentally although I’m enjoying Season 2 of Star Trek: Picard, also set in California in 2024, it fails my twenty-years-ago threshold.)

In 2001, the cartoonist Ted Hall published 2024, a graphic novel updating Orwell’s 1984. The economy is run by megacorporations that exploit ethnic tensions in trade wars; the protagonists are named Winston and Julia; news and history are easily revised digitally, and shopping and pornography substitute for social interaction and passion. (According to the review in Publishers Weekly.) You can get it here.

I promised a game, and here it is: Jet Set Radio Future, made by Sega for the Xbox in 2002, features kids with rocket-powered rolling skates zooming around Tokyo.

We’ve had Star Trek twice, and I’m glad to say that we can also have some Doctor Who. Last chronologically before my 20-year cutoff. The Eighth Doctor novel Emotional Chemistry by Simon A. Forward takes place in three timelines: 1812, the 21st century and the 51st century. The back cover makes it clear that the 21st century action is set in 2024, mostly in Russia. You can get it here (at a price).

Finally, and more optimistically, the protagonist of the 1999 film The Thirteenth Floor, having endured awful scenarios in virtual versions of 1999 and 1937, wakes up to discover that it’s 2024 and actually everything is OK.

Dystopias and more positive high-tech futures are finely balanced here – I count six of each, with maybe an extra dystopia if we are allowed to take the two versions of A Boy and his Dog separately. It could go either way, folks; let’s be careful this year!

Eastercon 2022: Reclamation

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Back in January 2020, before the world ended, I was attending a planning meeting for the bid to host the 2024 WorldCon in Glasgow, when two of the committee literally grabbed me and said they needed a word. One of them was Phil Dyson, and he revealed that he and his team were planning to bid for the 2022 Eastercon, the UK’s National Science Fiction Convention; and that they were formally inviting me to be the Fan Guest of Honour.

I was stunned into silence. (A rare occurrence.) If you look at the list of Guests of Honour for previous Eastercons, there are some pretty prestigious names there as both pro and fan guests, including some who I have slavishly admired since my teenage years. At the same time, I am very aware that you and I could easily name at least a dozen people who have put more years and work into fandom than I have, who have not yet been recognised in that way. So I had a really vivid moment of impostor syndrome.

And yet, it did not take me many seconds to say yes to Phil. I came late to Eastercon – my first was as recently as 2012 – but I have loved the atmosphere each time I attended in person, and felt more and more that this is an accepting community; my tribe. I accepted Phil’s proposal, and he looked relieved. So that was January 2020.

And then, as you know. the world ended.

The 2020 Eastercon, ConCentric, which would have been in Birmingham, was simply cancelled in all respects apart from an online bid session, at which the 2021 team presented their plans – and were given the community’s approval to proceed – and Phil presented his intention to bid for 2022, but declared that it was too early to seek formal approval. Eastercons do not reveal their Guests of Honour until they have won the selection vote. I was in the tantalising situation where I had hoped that the 2022 committee would go public, but of course they decided not to.

The 2021 Eastercon, Confusion, took place entirely virtually. This had its pluses and minuses (as reported in detail by Jo van Ekeren). The biggest plus was that at least it actually happened, and from my spare bedroom in Belgium I moderated one panel, spoke on two others and participated in several more. In particular, I learned a lot about Chinese SF from a panel about Jin Yong. The downside was that the technology was raw; many of the early panels and discussions were not streamed live, and the organisers seemed disturbingly nonchalant about the negative experiences of some participants.

There was, again, a bid session, held virtually. The 2021 team asked for another chance in 2023, and a challenger arose and advocated instead that the 2023 decision should be postponed. The session agreed. It also agreed, with little dissent, to approve Phil’s bid for the 2022 Eastercon, to be called “Reclamation”. At that point my own involvement became public, and so were my fellow Guests of Honour: Zen Cho, Mary Robinette Kowal and Philip Reeve. People in general were very kind about this, and if there was a negative comment on my role, I missed it completely. (If you did see any such thing, don’t feel that you need to enlighten me.)

Zen Cho had unfortunately had to withdraw for family reasons, but I’m glad to say that she will be one of the Guests of Honour at next year’s Eastercon instead. My father and both of her parents were born in what is now Malaysia, which is probably three more Malaysian-born GoH parents than in the previous history of Eastercon.

By the time the announcement was made, I had rather unexpectedly taken on the role of WSFS Division Head for the 2021 WorldCon, DisCon III to be held in Washington DC. I relinquished that role in late June, and shortly thereafter the Chair of the convention also resigned, to be replaced by one Mary Robinette Kowal, my fellow Eastercon 2022 Guest of Honour. The first thing I said to her when I saw her last weekend was to apologise for my role in thrusting that particular burden on her shoulders. I will not report her response.

Anyway, time passed, the plague receded to an extent, and last Thursday I set off to Heathrow (after a couple of days working in London), arriving in time for a lovely dinner with my wife and son and the Committee (and, in theory, the other Guests of Honour; but they all arrived on Friday).

Zen’s replacement was Tasha Suri, whose work I’m ashamed to say I was unfamiliar with, though in my 2020 Hugo administration role I had sent her a finalist pin for being on the inaugural Astounding Award ballot. Tasha was a bit distracted by domestic events during the weekend, but I instinctively liked her as a person and have now bought some of her work to enjoy.

As mentioned above, I knew Mary Robinette best of the other GoHs. We had some good rehashing of recent events, which again will not be further reported. She and Ian Whates did a breezy and enjoyable BSFA Awards ceremony. (Though I had only voted for one winner.) Her interests are gratifyingly eclectic, and I hoped but failed to go to a couple of her panels on historical topics. She flew out a little early to go to Kjell Lindgren’s next space launch.

Philip Reeve was a real discovery. Famous for Mortal Engines, of course, the only other book of his that I had read was a Fourth Doctor / Leela story from 2013 which I greatly enjoyed. Anne, F and I dined with him in the hotel on the Saturday and then took him out with a larger group including Mary Robinette on the Sunday. A charming, modest and reserved chap, who I hope we will see again.

Phil Dyson introduces the Guests of Honour – me, Tasha Suri, Philip Reeve and Mary Robinette Kowal

Badly backlit after-dinner photo on Sunday night

Apart from the opening and closing ceremonies, I had four panels, a Kaffeeklatsch and a formal stage interview during the weekend. When I say I had four panels, one of them was simply introducing Wendy Aldiss presenting her lovely book, My Father’s Things, in a discussion with Brian Aldiss’s publisher Scott Pack, and then sitting back in the audience and enjoying the illustrated narration.

The other three were two on politics and one on Doctor Who, which seems about right. They were front-loaded so that on Sunday all I had to worry about was the GoH interview, or so I thought. My Kaffeeklatsch was first thing on Saturday, and only two people came, both of whom I already knew well (Hi, Shana! Hi, Colette!); I wonder if there would have been more if it had been scheduled after my GoH interview rather than before?

All praise to Vincent Doherty, who carefully managed a delightful interview, much of which was summarised by the BSFA scribe Emily (click on the tweet for her full account):

These were the slides that Vince assembled from the photos I had sent in advance:

Two other things happened on the Sunday. The first was the hotly contested bid for the 2023 Eastercon, where I was called in to read aloud the (newly finalised) rules. The choice between the two contenders was resolved by a lobby vote, with each of the two bids assigned a door and supporters asked to leave the room by one or the other. Virtual votes, and votes from the less mobile, were tallied in parallel and added in. The winning bid had almost exactly 60% of support, which is comfortable but not crushing. Apparently this was the closest vote since the revolutionary year of 1989.

The other significant thing on Sunday was the new Doctor Who episode, a swashbuckling bit of Chinese pirate fun along with Sea Devils. (They call humans “Land Parasites”.) I won’t analyse it in depth, yet; I loved the deepening of the Doctor / Yasmin relationship and I loved even more the imminent return of Tegan and Ace.

Incidentally, and I should have posted this in February, I got a pic with Mandip Gill, who plays Yasmin, at Gallifrey One in February, and the green-screen effect means that the Tardis appears to be visible through my torso. They offered me another photo-op, but I quite like it.

Yesterday was much more relaxed, for me anyway. I attended the live recording of the Octothorpe podcast, where I was roundly mocked for predicting that they would win a BSFA Award, my attempts at camouflage proving strangely ineffective. (Note F, sitting beside me, wishing he was anywhere else.)

My attempt to hide from the scorn of Octothorpe

It was fantastic to be back with real people again, and I loved seeing all of you. You made my family very welcome as well, and that makes a big difference. Many thanks to Phil and all of his committee, and congratulations to James Shields on winning the Doc Weir Award. And I do hope to come again next year, though it does depend a bit on the venue.

A number of people inevitably came away with COVID as a souvenir of the convention. So far the numbers seem to be barely into double figures, out of 700 attendees, and I myself have tested negative. (Having caught my own dose at Novacon in November.) Fingers crossed that nobody is too badly affected.

Fannish friends will forgive my closing with our dear H, our guest for many Christmases, who cycled many miles to come and see us on Friday evening and Saturday morning. I hope that it will not be too long before we see any of you again.