I like futuristic dystopia stories for what they suggest
about humanity at present and where we are ultimately headed if we continue
down certain paths. But I generally like the vision to make some sense. I don’t
necessarily demand a lot of back story and exposition to explain how the future
became such as it is, but I would like it to make some sense according to what
I know of the world today. Even when our real life timeline inevitably reaches
the fictional year of some such movie or story and it turns out the vision hasn’t
really panned out, in the best ones we can find some parallels and maybe say, “Well,
it’s not 100 percent accurate but I can still see it as a possibility.” The
year 2001 came and went and although we have yet to develop the capabilities to
forge deep space travel as depicted in 2001:
A Space Odyssey, we have been to the moon since the film’s 1968 release and
humanity has explored (via unmanned probes) the far reaches of our solar
system. Blade Runner presents a
vision of Los Angeles in 2019 that is not close to coming to fruition, but
still looks like a possibility in some more distant future.
