The Future is Passe

A Facebook friend recently made me aware, through his status update, of a milestone about to pass unfulfilled. With only one day left in the year 2010 it would appear that we are NOT going to "make contact" as promised in the movie "2010: The Year We Make Contact" (1984). This realization made me think of other science-fiction movies that failed to predict the future before their settings became part of the past instead of the future.

Science-fiction tends to be speculative, and that's a good thing. It doesn't really try to "predict" the future, per se--just use the genre to tell a story that may or may not seem feasible in the real world. The "fiction" part of science-fiction allows for most any setting and plot lines the author/film-makers can imagine. The time frame can be any period in the past, present or future. The "science" aspect of science fiction frequently (but not always) tends to cause the setting to be in the future. Time travel stories/movies are a notable example. Usually the time machine apparatus is invented in the future ("The Terminator" (1984)), or the present ("Back to the Future" (1985)), and the protagonists of the story can then travel to any point in the past or future ("Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" (1989)...).

Now, when a science-fiction story is set in the future, the author/film-makers can choose between a couple of different ways to express when the action is taking place. The first method is to simply describe it as "the future", "the near future", or the futuristic setting can simply be implied by the story itself without needing to state it outright. What makes this method effective is that no matter when the story is read (or the movie watched), it will always be taking place in "the future". The other method is to explicitly state the time that the story is taking place in. This gives a sense of just how far into the future the story is unfolding and gives a sense of relativity to the reader's/viewer's own refernce point in time. This is perfectly fine with a newly published book or a recently released movie, but poses a problem when reading older books or watching older movies. What was "the future" in the story might actually be "the past" by the time someone reads/watches it. With the possible exception of Nostradamus and other future predictors, no one really knows what the future is going to bring. This is what makes science-fiction such an interesting and wide-open genre. One can speculate any kind of future that one can imagine and make an interesting story out of it. Of course, when the time of that story actually comes to pass, the "predictions" made in a future-based story will almost always not reflect the present world's reality.

There are many examples of this paradox, and more are happening all the time. I haven't done any exhaustive research on this topic, but here are a few examples that come to mind from my own movie-watching experience. "2010: The Year We Make Contact" is a very topical example, because 2010 is about to expire with no contact (that I'm aware of) with a higher intelligence from "out there". Jupiter has not collapsed in on itself, and it's going to have to do it pretty quickly if it wants to beat Dick Clark ringing in 2011. Of course "2010" was the sequel to the better known "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968). Both of these movies were based on Arthur C. Clarke books. As of tomorrow, the dates of both movies will be in the past. Clarke DID write two more books in his series, "2061: Odyssey Three" and "3001: The Final Odyssey". There's still quite a while before the book set in 2061 becomes dated, and 3001 is definitely going to be safe for some time.

Big Brother was watching us in the George Orwell novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four" and a couple movies based on that novel. 1984 probably seemed pretty far in the future when Orwell wrote the book in 1949, but obviously it is now pretty far in the past. My interest in science-fiction really solidified in the early 1980s so I remember hearing about the movie version that was released in 1984. I have never read the book or seen the movies (though I probably should), but am somewhat familiar with the whole "Big Brother is watching" theme. While 1984 came and went without Orwell's dystopian predictions coming true, the idea of "Big Brother" really has become part of our collective conscience. Whenever there's fear of loss of personal freedom or privacy because of corrupt government, identity theft, internet security issues, and the like we tend to hear something about "Big Brother".

The "Terminator" franchise is based on time travel, so some of its problems with time catching up with it can be explained away, but when you get right down to it, Skynet was supposed to become self-aware in August of 1997. It wasn't long after this date that the computers declare war on humanity. This date can be adjusted as the series continues by saying that the heroics of the good guys in the movies (TV show, comics...) caused a delay in when Skynet finally went online. Now that's science-fiction at work! The original time traveling in "The Terminator" occurred when characters were sent back to 1984 from the year 2029, so there's still a little while before that becomes dated.

Another 1980s-based time travel series of movies is coming close to a time of reckoning itself. "Back to the Future" (1985) is pretty safe. In that movie, Doc Brown invents a time machine in the present (1985) and Marty McFly travels 30 years in the past to 1955. No problems there. But in the first sequel to the movie, "Back to the Future Part II" (1989), Marty and Doc Brown travel into the future. How far in the future? All the way to the year 2015. As of tomorrow, 2015 will only be four years off.

TV shows aren't exempt from these time problems either. I first started watching the original "Twilight Zone" (1959-64) back in the early 1980s, when the show was already 20 to 25 years old. I remember at least a couple episodes that took place in the 1980s. It was interesting to hear that (seeing as how I was actually living in the 1980s), but it obviously broke the mood of a story that was supposed to be taking place in the not-too-distant future instead of the present.

"Space: 1999" came out in the mid-1970s, so the year 1999 was pretty far away at the time. Of course, the show (as well as Prince's song "1999") is now more than a decade out of date. It is now almost twelve years after the show was set, and (last I knew) the Moon is still very much in orbit around the Earth. The whole millennium era (1999, 2000, 2001) has always been a tantalizing setting for science-fiction stories. The simple change of century and the simple amazing-ness of imagining a year called "Two Thousand" instead of "Nineteen-Whatever" just seem made for sci-fi. Well, at least it SEEMED like an appropriate setting for stories filmed or written many years before the actual year 2000. Strangely enough, the real world had a very sci-fi-esque potential problem as we actually approached the millennium--the Y2K Bug. That turned out to be nothing much, but had the potential of being a very effective science-fiction story come to life. A world that had allowed itself to become so dependent on computers and technology (cell phones, satellites, the internet...) suddenly finds itself plunged into a new Dark Age when all that technology suddenly and completely stops working.

The TV show "Lost in Space" premiered in 1965. The story was set in the year 1997. I'm sure 1997 seemed quite distant in 1965, but of course now it's even more dated than "Space: 1999". When they made a movie out of the show in 1998, they adjusted the setting to 2058. That ought to keep reality from catching up to the movie...for a while at least.

I suppose the next date to be concerned with is 2012. Not only does the ancient Mayan calendar predict that the world will end in 2012, Hollywood recently gave us a movie about the world ending in that year called..."2012" (2009). I haven't watched that Ronald Emmerich-directed, John Cusack-starring special effects bonanza, but probably should before 2012--just in case the world ends and I don't get a chance to watch it later. While I understand why the film-makers chose to name this movie after the year 2012, they could have easily avoided the problem of having an outdated premise in a couple years by using a title more like 2004's "The Day After Tomorrow". While I didn't find that one to be a very good movie, it does have an almost perfect, foolproof science-fiction name. The day after tomorrow indicates something in the VERY near future, yet it's a date which will never actually arrive in reality. The day after tomorrow will ALWAYS be in the future!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Monster Dad vs. Time

For nearly as long as I can remember I've had a rough relationship with the concept of Time. I know it's something real, and I know I can't do anything to stop it ("Time stands still for no man"), but still I hurl my anger at it--much like Don Quixote forever tilting at windmills. Unlike Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones, Time is definitely NOT on my side.

I'm not exactly sure when my realization that Time was against me occurred, but it was certainly much too early in life. I'd venture to say that many people don't really start thinking and worrying about Time until they're nearing, or passing, midlife. In my case it's been something haunting me since childhood. The first real example I can remember was when my grandfather died while I was in the second grade. It's the first time death touched me personally. To be honest I think I was a bit too young to really understand what was going on as we went to the funeral and everything else that was happening, but it crystallized in me the notion that we are ALL growing older (as a direct result of Time) and we are all going to die at some point because of that same shadowy Time figure. It didn't matter if you were a little kid like I was or an "old" person, like my older siblings and parents--at some point Time would catch up with you. Of course now I realize that not everyone dies of old age, but I was only in the second grade at the time, so that bit of naivete can probably be overlooked.

The death aspect of Time was the most extreme part of this phenomenon. I suppose that, because of our mortality, it all does eventually leads to that, but most of my battles with Time were over smaller matters. I distinctly recall lying in bed before the first day of school and being unable to get to sleep while trying to figure out just how Time had managed to rob me of yet another summer. Then every week during the school year would present me with the problem of Sunday. My absolute favorite part of the week was the moment I got home from school on Friday afternoon. It was the point which marked the longest amount of Time before returning to school on Monday morning. Friday night and all of Saturday were carefree zones. However Sunday night was all doom and gloom as I felt Monday creeping up on me with the help of Time. At first it was simply Sunday night that caused my dismay.But then it eventually spread earlier and earlier until I associated the entire day of Sunday with the end of the weekend. Of course that meant that late night Saturday became the moment of the beginning of the end of the weekend. Geez, if that had gone on much longer I would have been miserable for the entire weekend.

Music has only fed my fear of Time over the years. I remember, even as a kid, finding the song "Puff, the Magic Dragon" incredibly sad. It's not a sad song overall, but the line "Dragons live forever, but not so little boys" really struck me hard. It not only reflected Time's effect on children, but also hinted at another thing I find very sad--the inevitable loss of child-like imagination that comes with growing up. To this day I still have a difficult time listening to "Puff, the Magic Dragon". I know that sounds silly, but it's tough too, because I'd love to listen to it with my daughter--who likes dragons and dinosaurs--but just can't seem do it.

Listening to Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle" was always a gut-wrenching experience for me as a kid. "If I could save time in a bottle"--that pretty much says it all. I always wished I could do so, but knew it was impossible. I loved "The Muppet Show" when I was little, but had a hard time watching this segment which featured the song.

A little later I discovered that Pink Floyd was also well aware of the problem that is Time. Check out these lines that always get me from the song "Time" off the "Dark Side of the Moon" album.

You are young and life is long

And there is time to kill today

And then one day you find

Ten years have got behind you

No one told you when to run

You missed the starting gun

AND (even more to the point)

And you run and you run

To catch up with the sun

But it's sinking

Racing around

To come up behind you again

The sun is the same

In a relative way

But you're older

Shorter of breath

And one day closer to death

The whole song really captures the futility I feel when thinking about Time. The Pretenders also touched on the topic with their song "Time the Avenger":

Thought that time was on your side,

Now, it's time the avenger.

Nobody is permanent,

Everything is on loan here.

Heck, even Cyndi Lauper, the girl who just wanted to have fun, sang the touching song "Time After Time". And Harry Chapin's "Cat's in the Cradle" is mainly a tearjerker about a father not being there for his son, only to find out that the son eventually turns out to be "just like me". But there's no doubt that Time fuels the changes that make the song so tragic and sad. It's a sad song that has only grown sadder to me now that I'm a parent myself.

Monster Dad is obviously interested in movies, and there have been more than a few movies that I've seen which speak of the battle with Time. The following three examples deal specifically with time travel and are among my favorite movies. George Pal's "The Time Machine" (1960, remade in 2002)--based on the H.G. Wells book of the same name--isn't particularly sad, but it does show a man winning the battle against Time--at least for a while. Along the way there are certainly melancholic moments, and it culminates with the mind-boggling topic of the distant future and philosophical questions about Time itself. "Time After Time" (1979) also deals with time travel, and is also partially based on H.G. Wells' work (the main character in the movie is H.G. Wells himself--and he does battle with Jack the Ripper in modern day San Francisco). "Somewhere in Time" (1980) deals with Time and time travel in a way that makes for a very sad and touching movie.

While a truce has never been agreed upon, and true peace between the conflicting parties probably won't come about until I'm resting in peace myself, I do have to say that my battles with Time had become relatively few and far-between until recently. The passage of Time has seemingly continued to increase in speed as I have aged. Every day, week, month and year seems to pass faster than the one before it. This didn't really bother me or cause me undue stress until about five years ago--when I learned that Time and parenthood don't mix very well. The birth of my two daughters, and the process of watching them grow up before my very eyes, has reminded me of the cruelty of Time once again. I still consider my first daughter to be my "baby". But now she is almost five years old. It's so strange to look at this tall, imaginative pre-schooler, who is growing more and more every day, and try to comprehend that she was that little helpless baby we brought home from the hospital not so long ago. I'm now starting to see bits of myself as a young boy (from around the time that Time first started to become a problem for me) in her. My younger daughter is now almost a year-and-a-half old. Suddenly I'm witnessing her hit many, many milestones that I remember daughter number one doing not so long ago. It all just goes by too fast, and there's nothing I can do to stop it--or even just slow it down a little. The battle continues...

Epilogue

As a kid I envisioned Time as a massive machine. I guess this was my youthful mind's attempt to comprehend something as big as Time itself. This gargantuan machine (which I believe was located in a giant cave) would loudly process Time and make a product out of it (The Past). A conveyor belt would take unprocessed time (full of possibilities and potential) into the mouth of the machine. This ethereal, unprocessed time was "The Future". The main part of the machine, the part that mashed, mangled and manipulated this raw material, was "The Present". This portal represented the Now that we are all constantly living in. And the final product (or by-product if you will) of the machine's machinations, which looked much like the remnants of crushed garbage or old cars that come out of those giant compactors found at junk yards, was "The Past". We are always stuck in "The Present", as the machine processes what is happening Right Now. We can't reach the unspoiled promise of "The Future", and "The Past" is simply what we see coming out of the back end of the machine. It could be observed, but it was what it was and couldn't be changed.

Today I turned forty-one. Forty-one years have passed since I entered this world. Much has changed. Much remains the same. The one real constant seems to be that time continues to pass with little to no regard for our feelings. A year ago I turned forty. This seemed like a big number at the time, but at least I was merely a "forty-year-old". Now I'm not forty, but "in my forties". For whatever reason, that sounds worse and makes my battles with time from here on out feel more and more urgent.

And, of course, my lifelong forty-or-so year battle is less than the blink of an eye and totally inconsequential when it comes to Time...