THE YEAR TO COME THAT WAS THE YEAR THAT WAS

Well then, how the hell are ya?

Been a while hasn't it. How's the wife? The husband? The husband-wife? The wife-husband? That weird figure dressed all in rubber hanging over there in the corner, the one you call Fritz? All good?

Awesome

It has indeed been a while. This is, in fact, my first post of 2017. That's a weird thing to post. Not the fact that I haven't posted in a while, that's really not so surprising as I'm lazy and easily distracted and ... oooooh shiny

Um. Where was I.

Oh yeah. 2017. That's weird, for me, to type. The fact that I am alive and living in the year 2017. I'm a dude who was born in the year 1957. The year that Sputnik was launched. Truly, the beginning of the space race and the space age.

Probably not surprising that I became a fan of science fiction. I couldn't yet read in 1957 but sic fi novels from that time were looking forward to the far fabulous future of 1970 When I was a teenager there was a truly horrible TV series called Space 1999. That was the future. I think they resisted from calling it Space 2000 because people simply would not be able to wrap their head around that

Those dates, those numbers are funny things. In the year 1969 two guys called Zager and Evans released a song called In the Year 2525. That seemed a long, long time away from us and it was difficult to think what could be possible. A lot of people living in 1969 had seen monumental changes in their lifetimes; world wars, technology, massive social change. What could 2525 hold?

Back then I could have done the math. Not likely that I would see 2525. Here in 2017, at age 60, I know that I will never see 2525, it's hundreds of years away but being in the 2000's, it somehow doesn't seem so far away

What's the threshold for some date, some future, just being inconceivable? The year 10,000, that seems difficult to think of. That would be a time where I can imagine not much left on Earth, a lot of emptiness, humans dying off. In 1930's sic fi, the date would have been Year 2,000

So here we all are, living in our future. That far flung sic fi future. We can say, hey where's the flying car and the robot butler and the robot? Well, no flying car but the other two, here if not widespread. Damn, we're looking at self driving cars as a thing. We've been to the moon. And maybe, just maybe, to Mars in my life time

Everyone can play that game I suppose Maybe people born in this year, 40 years into the future will be telling their kids "Yeh back in my day we could go outside without oxygen and body armour and the world wasn't ruled by the Celebrity TV Stars Collective ..."

Future Shock, as the book suggested. Funny, isn't it, that that book is now part of the past

You can't escape the past, the future it keeps on coming, and the numbers will keep climbing. Strap in kids, it's going to be a bumpy ride