Set in the 2020s.
4 works chose this decade. They did not choose it from the same distance, so applying each gap from 2026 scatters them across 78 years — 2047 to 2125.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The year the publisher substituted
Dick set the novel 24 years ahead, in 1992. Then his publisher moved it: the 1982 film tie-in rewrote the date to 2021 so the book would sit nearer Blade Runner's, and later editions kept the change. Written in 2026, the year Dick actually chose would fall in 2050.
Metropolis
Fritz Lang's 1927 city was built 99 years ahead of the camera, in a 2026 of towers, shift clocks and a machine that wears a woman's face. The film never says the year out loud. The number came later, off a paperback cover, and the world has been quoting it ever since.
Children of Men
Cuarón moved P. D. James's 2021 six years out, to 2027, 21 years beyond the film's own release. It is one of the shortest speculative reaches here, which is why so much of it is already checkable. Made in 2026, the same reach would land in 2047.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
The war against the machines
James Cameron's 1991 sequel dated the end of the world precisely: 1997, 6 years after the film reached cinemas. That was near enough to read as a deadline rather than a fantasy. The deadline came and went, and the sequels have been quietly moving it ever since.