Timeline for What was the first story to be set in the future?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
39 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 31, 2020 at 18:26 | answer | added | Marvel Boy | timeline score: 3 | |
| Jun 20, 2017 at 5:31 | comment | added | M. A. Golding | Rip van Winkle is set in the past. It was published in 1819 and Rip slept for 20 odd years from before the American Revolution (1775-1783) to after it, awaking in the period of about 1783 to 1795 and possibly during Washington's administration 1789-1797. If Rip was supposed to wake up after 1819 he would have slept for over 44 years and very few people if any would remember him. | |
| Feb 12, 2016 at 6:27 | comment | added | keshlam | Arguably, any sentence beginning with "someday" qualifies.... | |
| Feb 11, 2016 at 19:50 | comment | added | Jay | ... is getting into definitions. I'd say no, but I'd agree we're getting into edge cases. How much narrative you need for something to be a "story" is debatable too: I've read SF stories presented as a series of memos, or a report sent back to headquarters, that I would call "stories" because of their intended fictional nature. But a series of memos or a report with similar content but presented as true I wouldn't call a "story", even if I thought it was totally false and highly fanciful. (BTW Jesus's parables are clearly presented as fiction. Fiction with a point, of course.) | |
| Feb 11, 2016 at 19:43 | comment | added | Jay | @NateEldredge Sure. We're on a tangent here, but: My comment about insults was referring to those who say "it's a bunch of fiction" meaning "I don't believe it's true" when a document is clearly presented as non-fiction. It's certainly true one can write SF with religious themes: James Blish's "A Case of Conscience", many Bradbury stories, etc. Yes, some interpret Revelation as all or partly allegorical. I don't think it has enough narrative to be called a "story", but that's arguable. Whether an allegorical interpretation would give you something that qualifies as SF ... | |
| Feb 11, 2016 at 16:46 | comment | added | Nate Eldredge | I think Revelations is a particularly tricky example. Even religious scholars are divided as to whether it was intended as a prophecy that certain events would literally come to pass, or whether it was meant as an allegory. The latter interpretation would put it on a similar footing to science fiction, I'd say - I don't mean that as an insult, I think there actually are parallels. The fact that Revelations was meant to convey a religious message wouldn't necessarily disqualify it either - there's plenty of SF with religious themes. | |
| Feb 11, 2016 at 14:56 | comment | added | Jay | @TylerH That was the point in some of the constraints I was trying to put on answers. I was trying to keep it to stories that could be called "science fiction" in at least a broad sense, and exclude warnings and promises and predictions that are not stories. | |
| Feb 11, 2016 at 14:42 | comment | added | TylerH | @Jay That's a pretty broad question, which is my point. Also it's on the verge of off-topic because you're not asking about science-fiction or fantasy, just about a story written in the future. | |
| Feb 11, 2016 at 14:30 | comment | added | Jay | ... I'm looking for things that could be called "science fiction stories". A prophecy that is, or claims to be, a revelation from God or the gods is not a story in that sense. Just like a financial analyst's predictions about what the market will do next year are not an SF story. And yes, yes, an atheist might say that a religious book is "all a bunch of science fiction". But that's just an insult, not a serious genre definition. Just like if someone says that the Congressional Budget Office's economic predictions are "a bunch of science fiction". | |
| Feb 11, 2016 at 14:27 | comment | added | Jay | @fredsbend Yes, there are prophecies in the Bible, and other ancient religious books, about the future. That's pretty much an essential element of "prophecy": people are rarely impressed when you predict the past. But I was trying to distinguish such predictions from true stories. i.e. "your kingdom will fall to the Babylonians" or "the stock market will fall 10% next year" are not "stories". I had a post earlier where I said how a prediction like this could be phrased as a narrative, so you could run into hazy cases. But still, the idea is fundamentally different. ... | |
| Feb 11, 2016 at 14:20 | comment | added | Jay | @TylerH That was the point of my question. Did ancient Egyptians or Hittites or whomever write stories about what they thought the world might be like in 100 years? Is this something that people have been doing since the beginning of recorded history? Or is it an idea that did not come until more recent times? | |
| Feb 11, 2016 at 2:46 | comment | added | Jim Garrison | I would think futurism (devising stories set in the future) originated coincidentally with whatever brain evolution produced the ability to conceptualize the "future". This happened long before recorded history. | |
| Feb 11, 2016 at 0:32 | comment | added | user15742 | I mean, it's right there in the first verse in Rev. 1: "The revelation from Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place." This story is set in the future. Written in about AD 100, John was probably thinking "soon" meant in a life time or two from now. | |
| Feb 11, 2016 at 0:29 | comment | added | user15742 | In fact, from the Bible alone, I can think of at least a handful of prophetic stories that I think should count as "future-set stories". | |
| Feb 11, 2016 at 0:27 | comment | added | user15742 | I don't see why religious prophecy falls outside the realm of fantasy. Are not prophecies very common literary devices for millennia now? The first that comes to my mind is Oedipus Rex, circa 300BC. The story begins with a short story about the end of Oedipus' life. The story is not quite religious, but future set nonetheless, for at least those few lines. Take Revelation as well, circa AD 100. This is certainly religiously prophetic, but denying the elements of fantasy is crazy. | |
| Feb 10, 2016 at 15:47 | review | Close votes | |||
| Feb 10, 2016 at 15:56 | |||||
| Feb 10, 2016 at 15:25 | comment | added | TylerH | I think this question is too broad because some scribe in ancient Egypt could have written a story about what will happen to him tomorrow as if it were real. BUT I think it could easily be made on-topic by specifying a beginning cut-off date like "since the printing press was invented" or "since the concept of publishing was created, and only published works" or something. | |
| Feb 10, 2016 at 15:15 | comment | added | Jay | @devsolar Despite being of Norwegian ancestry, I've only read snippets of Germanic/Norse mythology. Mostly what's in the back of Edith Hamilton. So I don't claim to have an informed opinion on this subject. (Of course, most people don't let total ignorance prevent them from having strong opinions on a subject, but.) | |
| Feb 10, 2016 at 15:06 | comment | added | DevSolar | @Jay: In that case Ragnarök would actually qualify, since Germanic paganism doesn't claim "divine inspiration" in the first place, and the stories neither promise nor warn, just state. ;-) Nevermind, I just wanted to point out an interesting sidenote. | |
| Feb 10, 2016 at 14:57 | comment | added | Jay | Several good and interesting answers, but I can only pick one to award the gold medal. Sorry FuzzyBoots, yours may be the actual right answer, but as I say, had to pick one. Now I want to check out the stories mentioned. | |
| Feb 10, 2016 at 14:55 | vote | accept | Jay | ||
| Feb 10, 2016 at 14:52 | comment | added | Jay | ... (b) If the prophecy is really of divine or otherwise supernatural origin, it's not about human creativity. Of course a non-believer in the given religion would say it's all about human imagination, and I wanted to avoid getting into a religious argument. | |
| Feb 10, 2016 at 14:51 | comment | added | Jay | @DevSolar To the extent that my opinion as the OP matters -- and apparently others are interested in the question so I don't suppose my opinion is definitive any more -- by ruling out religious prophecies I meant, rule out prophecies that are given by divine inspiration or claimed to be so, on the reasoning that: (a) They are not really "stories" but more like promises and/or warnings. I wasn't really looking for "based on our analysis, we predict the stock market will rise by 200 points next year" either. ... | |
| Feb 10, 2016 at 14:26 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackSciFi/status/697426496303079425 | ||
| Feb 10, 2016 at 9:30 | comment | added | DevSolar | I would like to mention Ragnarök as a special case, since it's not so much a "religious prophecy" ("do this and find salvation" / "do this or you will be damned"), but a rather peculiar telling of the future fate of gods, told in a way that makes it none too clear whether it will happen, might happen, or already has happened... (because Germanic mythology is circular, not linear like e.g. Christian myths) It's religious, anyway, hence a comment and not an answer. | |
| Feb 10, 2016 at 1:27 | comment | added | January First-of-May | @MathiasFoster I wanted to say that too :-) specifically, the in-story references seem to indicate that Rip van Winkle slept from 1776 (or perhaps 1775) to 1796. The story itself was written in the 1810s, so yes, both ends are in the past. | |
| Feb 10, 2016 at 1:04 | comment | added | user32390 | Rip van WInkle starts and ends in the past, as the author knew about the American Revolution. | |
| Feb 9, 2016 at 22:32 | comment | added | user11521 | I assume you also want to rule out religious prophecies which have been deemed to have come true, as there is always the question of whether a text that is thousands of years old and predicted events 400 years in its future was really written when it claimed to be. | |
| Feb 9, 2016 at 21:11 | answer | added | January First-of-May | timeline score: 34 | |
| Feb 9, 2016 at 20:45 | comment | added | coredump | Related: xkcd.com/1491/large | |
| Feb 9, 2016 at 19:46 | comment | added | ThePopMachine | @Jay: Like I said, I have no problem with this question; I like it. But there is sometimes a tendency for what I at least internally classify as "VTC because we can (i.e. I can tell a story about why this is violating some perceived rule, not because the gist is actually bad)" and then there can be clear bandwagon voting behavior. And once the bandwagon starts, it's nearly impossible to reverse. It happens to be my pet peeve, so I was just trying to help out preemptively. I am glad to see there is support in this case (based on upvotes on my initial comment). | |
| Feb 9, 2016 at 18:51 | answer | added | Hypnosifl | timeline score: 32 | |
| Feb 9, 2016 at 18:40 | answer | added | Jonathon | timeline score: 23 | |
| Feb 9, 2016 at 18:33 | comment | added | Jay | @MishaRosnach Yes, except that I wouldn't include the clause about technology. If, for example, someone wrote a story in 1600 about civilization collapsing in 1700, there might well be no new technology, but it would be a "story set in the future". | |
| Feb 9, 2016 at 18:30 | comment | added | Misha R | In other words, stories that are set in the future relative to the writer, written for reasons other than immediate practical implementation or instruction, have a narrative, and include technology not available at the time they were written? | |
| Feb 9, 2016 at 18:30 | comment | added | Doug Warren | "I tried to think of the most harmless thing. Something I loved from my childhood. Something that could never ever possibly destroy us. Mr. Stay Puft!" | |
| Feb 9, 2016 at 18:28 | comment | added | Jay | @ThePopMachine Hmm, I tried to make the question concrete with no room for opinion, beyond possible quibbles over borderline cases, which I think could apply to almost any question. I guess we'll see what the reaction is. | |
| Feb 9, 2016 at 18:21 | comment | added | ThePopMachine | Before people start complaining about this being too broad or too opinion based, let me preemptively throw my hat in the ring that this is a Good Question. There will be borderline cases, but I think we can get an answer to the gist of the question. | |
| Feb 9, 2016 at 18:15 | history | asked | Jay | CC BY-SA 3.0 |