The method
Every work here is measured by one number: the distance between the year it was made and the year it depicts. That distance is then reapplied from the current year.
The formula
recalculated = currentYear + (depictedYear − releaseYear)
Back to the Future was released in 1985 and set in 1955, so its offset is 30 years. Applied from 2026, that reaches 1996.
What counts as the year a work depicts
For a story that travels, it is the year travelled to. For a story set in a period, it is the year the story opens. Series that drift forward across seasons are anchored to their premiere setting, and the drift is noted in the facts rather than modelled season by season.
Some works carry more than one date — a near-future event and a distant one, say. Each is recorded separately, one is marked primary for the headline, and the rest appear further down the page with their own arithmetic.
Ranges and vague settings
A work spanning several years shifts as a whole: both ends move by the same offset, so the span keeps its width. Where a source only supports a decade, the result is shown as a decade. Inventing a specific year the source material does not have would make the number look more certain than it is, so the site does not do it. Where the setting cannot be pinned down at all, the work is not published.
A few works produce absurd results — a story set hundreds of thousands of years out returns a number that is arithmetically correct and practically meaningless. Those carry a note saying so.
Where the facts come from
Every fact on this site carries its own source link, and only facts that were checked against a real source are published. Where sources disagree, the disagreement is shown on the page rather than resolved silently. The full working — including sources that were consulted and rejected — is kept in the repository's research log.
How the pages look
There are no film stills, posters, frames, or logos anywhere on this site, including its social images. Everything visual is original: type, colour, and drawn geometry.
Most works get their own colour scheme and their own set of shapes, chosen to suit that particular title. Colour is not imagery and is not anyone's property, so a page can look like the thing it is about without borrowing a single pixel from it. Works without a bespoke treatment fall back to a palette keyed to the era they depict — currently Mid-century, Deco, Neon future — which is why a page set in the 1950s does not look like one set in a speculative future.
What this site knows about you
Very little, and nothing that identifies you. Visits are counted with Plausible, which sets no cookies, stores no personal data, and does not follow you anywhere else. That is why there is no cookie banner: there is nothing to ask you to consent to. It is the only piece of anyone else's code on this site — the fonts, the artwork and everything else are served from here.
What happens on 1 January
Nothing, from a person. The figures are computed when the site is built, not when it is read, so they are present in the HTML rather than assembled in your browser. A scheduled job rebuilds the site daily, and the build fails if the year on the page does not match the year the build ran in.
The current year is read in UTC, because that is what the build infrastructure runs on. If you are west of Greenwich on 31 December, this site will tick over a few hours before your calendar does.
This build
Recalculated for 2026. Built . 1 work published.