[Poll] Is It Tomorrow Yet?

[thefourthvine]

I have been watching All Things Kirk and Spock lately, including some of the original-cast movies. Which means that recently I saw The Wrath of Khan. Now, I've talked before about my history with the pivotal scene in that movie, but to summarize: first time I saw it, in Killa's vid Dante's Prayer, Best Beloved had to narrate the whole thing for me so I knew what was going on, and I didn't get why she was teary. Later, after I came to know Spock through fan fiction, I was the one getting teary. This time? Watching it in the actual movie? COMPLETE MELTDOWN. I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed, and I knew what was coming. But - SPOCK. SPOCK! And then Kirk loses it in an elevator. Oh my GOD.

But that is not my point. (I just can't talk about anything without talking about Spock these days.) My point is that I realized, watching that movie, that it seemed totally reasonable to the makers of it that by 1996 we would have:

• Genetic engineering of complex traits in humans
  
• Long-term cryogenics from which you could reliably be, you know, unfrozen
  
• Prolonged deep space trips featuring (frozen) humans

Those of you who remember 1996 (and if you do, think on this: there are now teenagers whose excuse for not remembering 1996 is that they weren't born yet) will probably also recall that we did not have any of those things then. And, in fact, we don't have them now. And it's not like we're expecting them next year, either.

This, taken in conjunction with a recent post on my friends list, made me think about the future. Are we in it?

(For extra credit, please list your favorite Signs of the Future (either realized or not) in the comments.)

[Poll #1508335]

Comments

[malnpudl.livejournal.com]

Huh. I am a middle-button girl. Consistently. I suspect that has a lot to do with the SF authors I read most heavily when I was a teenager -- Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, Sturgeon. According to the pictures they painted in my mind, we ain't there yet.

[jenna-thorn.livejournal.com]

Heh, I was just thinking, all my buttons were top buttons and I wonder if it isn't age-related, not so much the scifi influences, since I read Heinlein too, but I remember black and white tv and when it went off at midnight, replaced by a high pitched tone and a static picture or, later, the waving flag, and I was a teen when we got our first microwave and we were such early adopters of the vcr technology that we bought a beta.

[malnpudl.livejournal.com]

Then we must be more or less of an age; I'm 51 and was nodding "yes, uh-huh" to your list. :-)

[jenna-thorn.livejournal.com]

Not far off. I'm a little younger, but not much. Old enough to have seen Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers in the theater. Young enough to have done so. 8-)

Oh! Can I add fashion disasters to the list? Oh, wait, I caught enough of the recent Music Awards to know what Lady Gaga wore. Never mind.

My future has a soundtrack filled with synthesizers and distortion.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

You don't have to be in your 40s or 50s (or 30s or 20s!) to find Lady Gaga's fashion choices a complete disaster. :D

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

I tend to be a middle-button girl myself, although I will admit to straying on one of the questions. And I started with a truckload of classic SF, too. (My early fascinating with Isaac Asimoc's I, Robot - but just the ones about Powell and Donovan - can be traced entirely to my incipient slasherness, but I liked other classic SF, too.)

Sad, really, because now I can't face re-reading a lot of the books I love, since it's gotten harder and harder for me to justify SHRIEKING MISOGYNY AND RACISM by saying, "But it's such a good story!" *sigh*

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Sad, really, because now I can't face re-reading a lot of the books I love, since it's gotten harder and harder for me to justify SHRIEKING MISOGYNY AND RACISM by saying, "But it's such a good story!" *sigh*

Oh God, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, and oh, Piers Anthony, anyone? A Spell For Chameleon was a great book until I, you know, became aware of things like, oh, ANYTHING to do with what it is to be a woman in this world.

[jenna-thorn.livejournal.com]

Not just Scifi. I bought a copy of Kipling's Just So stories, because i remembered loving the Elephant's child and Taffi and her daddy inventing the alphabet.

and then I read them.

Wow, colonialism and imperialism and privilege, oh my. Some of the stories actually age fairly well. But not all.