7 works, 10 settings
These futures are behind us.
Nineteen Eighty-Four put its future in 1984. That was 42 years ago. Every work here was written forward and is now read backward, and the shift below is what each one would be reaching for if it were made this year instead.
Next to run out: Metropolis, set in 2026, which stops being the future on 1 January 2027.
Nineteen Eighty-Four
42 years ago
Orwell finished his last book on a Scottish island, dying of tuberculosis, and set it 35 years ahead of himself. The year in the title is the most famous date in English fiction, and the novel itself is not certain it is the right one — Winston writes it down and immediately doubts it.
Escape from New York
The year the wall went up — 38 years ago
Carpenter wrote it in 1976, after Watergate, and set it 16 years ahead, in 1997, with Manhattan walled off as the country's only maximum-security prison. Made in 2026, the same reach would put the wall up in 2042 — near enough that the first audience would expect to be around to check.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
34 years ago
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.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
The present-day story — 31 years ago
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.
Escape from New York
29 years ago
Carpenter wrote it in 1976, after Watergate, and set it 16 years ahead, in 1997, with Manhattan walled off as the country's only maximum-security prison. Made in 2026, the same reach would put the wall up in 2042 — near enough that the first audience would expect to be around to check.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
29 years ago
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.
2001: A Space Odyssey
25 years ago
The only work here whose title is its own arithmetic. Kubrick and Clarke set the film 33 years ahead of the year it opened, close enough that most of the first audience expected to be alive for it. Made in 2026, the same reach would put a different year on the poster: 2059.
Akira
7 years ago
Akira opens by destroying Tokyo on 16 July 1988 — the day the film itself opened in Japanese cinemas. The story then jumps 31 years forward, to a Neo-Tokyo rebuilt on the crater and plagued by corruption. Made in 2026, that same jump would set the city in 2057.
Blade Runner
7 years ago
Ridley Scott's 1982 film built a 2019 out of rain, sodium light and advertising, then lost money explaining it. The year it named is now 7 years behind us, and the film has outlasted its own deadline by becoming the way everyone else draws the future.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The year the publisher substituted — 5 years ago
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.