This article was nominated for deletion. So that it isn't lost forever, I'm saving a copy here. Information
Science fiction and other related fields of
fiction are often set in the future, or at least involve events in times that have not yet occurred. This list is a chronological collection of significant events from various works of such fiction. It includes some events that were set in the future when the fiction containing them was first written but which have now been overtaken by real
history, becoming a form of
alternate history or
failed prediction in the process.
It is rarely true that science fiction writers are seriously attempting prediction — the needs of the story are usually the primary concern, and science fiction stories are often more about the present in which they are written than the future in which they are supposedly set.
A passing comet rips people, land, and air off the
Earth. The small group takes refuge in a volcano on Comet Gallia. Calculating passing Saturn and a return to Earth in two years, the group begins to build a makeshift balloon and gondola - Off On a Comet by Jules Verne.
1880
Prof. Von Hardwigg and his party descend into an Icelandic mountain in search of missing explorer Arne Saknussem and discover an unknown sea world with monsters - Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne, 1864. *(In the 1959 film, he is known as Prof. Lindenbrook)
1894
The Time Traveller sets the levers on his machine in motion, for his journey to the future - The Time Machine by
H. G. Wells, 1895.
In a gun-launched capsule, French astronomers take A Trip to the Moon and escape from Selenites -
Georges Melies' B&W fantasy, 1902.
1905
Martian three-legged ' fighting machines ' invade southern England in The War of the Worldsby H. G. Wells (written in 1898).
1910
When the orbit of
Comet Halley intersects with the Earth, catastrophe ensues, but the comet gases cause an alteration of human psychology to a more rational thought-process - as revealed In the Days of the Comet by H. G. Wells (written in 1906).
1917
March 5 - British
RFC Flt. Lt. Decker is lost over France - and flies through a white cloud - but returns unexpectedly, a changed man. The Twilight Zone episode The Last Flight.
September 9 - George, the Time Traveller, encounters his friend Filby, but it's actually Filby's now grown son James, who advises his father was lost in the
Great War - George Pal's production The Time Machine, 1960.
Global Airlines 33 leaves the
Jurassic Age in its hope to return to 1961. Instead, the jet airliner is flying over the 1939 New York World's Fair. The Twilight Zone episode The Odyssey of Flight 33.
1940
At the home of Everytown resident John Cabal, his contemporaries discuss the prospect of war. But Cabal interjects ' If we don't end war, war will end us '. Then over the
wireless, reports announce that enemy bombers are approaching - H. G. Wells' filmThings to Come, 1936
June 10 - Thinking he's having a problem with his machine, George halts his progress in time-travel and is stunned to witness ' flying machines ' battling above London - George Pal's production The Time Machine, 1960.
1950
Politicians and engineers battle themselves, deception, and nature in the quest to build an undersea tunnel from England to the US- Transatlantic Tunnel, 1935.
1951
An air force crew and scientists at Polar Expedition Six, the Arctic, discover a crashed saucer and fight for their lives against an 8-foot, plant-based, humanoid alien - The Thing From Another World.
A saucer suddenly lands in a
Washington D.C. field, and a humanoid visitor steps out, with a message for Humanity. He's preceded by a towering silver robot, whom the visitor calls Gort - The Day The Earth Stood Still, based upon Harry Bates' short story Farewell to the Master, 1940.
The U.S. government adopts the designs of von Braun and Willy Ley, establishing the National Council of Astronautics and theUS Space Force - Man Conquers Space 2006.
1955
November 15 - Doc Brown falls and hits his head. He then has a vision of a mechanism allowing for time travel, the
Flux Capacitor - Back to the Future, 1985.
1959
British RFC flyer Decker emerges from a cloud to land his
SPAD XIII at a modern USAF base in France, unprepared to encounter an old friend he'd deserted - The Twilight Zone episode The Last Flight.
Seeds of a semi-nuclear Little War begin to sprout; over decades, it will destroy Washington D.C. and surrounding areas (novel version of Logan's Run).
1961
Capt. Farver and the New York-bound flight of Global Airlines 33 find themselves drastically increasing speed in The Twilight Zone episode The Odyssey of Flight 33.
The winged Saturn launch vehicle completes Wheel Space Station 1, operational with a crew of 45. Eagle One lands on the
Moon July 1963, followed by Eagle Two and Eagle Three - Man Conquers Space, 2006.
1964
Trent, a man with a glass hand and no memories, is hunted by aliens from a thousand years in the future - Harlan Ellison's Demon with a Glass Hand, episode of The Outer Limits
1966
August 11 - The Time Traveller encounters his old friend's son James again, now elderly, just prior to a
nuclear explosion -
George Pal's production The Time Machine, 1960.
After three decades of global war, a great plague wipes out most of the people on Earth. (Things to Come film, 1936)
1967
A computer malfunction sends a group of American nuclear bombers on an attack course toward Moscow. (The novel version ofFail-Safe)
A possible setting of Doctor Who's "
UNIT Era". It is also possible that it takes place during the 1980s.
1970
An older John Cabal, a member of the global 'Wings Over the World', lands his flying wing
aeroplane in world-war torn Everytown. He advises that peace has arrived, but the town's head, 'The Boss', does not approve. (Things to Come film, 1936)
1972
February - Astronaut George Taylor and three other volunteers (John Landon, Dodge and Stewart) depart Earth from Cape Kennedy on a mission that will take them 2,000 years into the future. (Planet of the Apes)
1973
Designed by Adm.
Harriman Nelson (USN-Ret), the nuclear supersub
USOS Seaview, with its transparent hull-plating 'window' nose section, undergoes radio silence and deep-diving trials in the
Arctic Ocean.
A manmade superflu breaks out and kills 99.4 percent of the population of the planet (The Stand by
Stephen King).
1984
April - Winston Smith, a secretly rebellious file clerk in the Ministry of Truth, is arrested and tortured by
Big Brother (Nineteen Eighty-Four by
George Orwell and its two film versions).
The first T-800 series
Terminator arrives, sent back in time by Skynet in an attempt to prevent the birth of resistance leader John Connor by killing his mother Sarah before he is even conceived. The John Connor of 2029 sends Kyle Reese back to defend Sarah from the Terminator. He knows that Reese, though doomed, will fall in love with his mother and is, in fact, his father (The Terminator).
1986
March 25 - An on-course NASA never embraces the shuttle program. Leaving from the orbiting
Aries command module, the
Challenger excursion module lands in Mangala Valley, Mars - Voyage by Stephen Baxter, 1997.
The year in which the living energy structure called the Mandragora Helix will be in a position to attack Earth again, as predicted by the
Fourth Doctor (Doctor Who: The Masque of Mandragora).
The Umbrella Corporation conducts experiments on the citizens of
Raccoon City using the Tyrant Virus, or
T-Virus for short, which is a mutagenic virus developed to create Bio-Organic Weapons, or BOWs for short. (
Resident Evil)
All Year - The world is saved from the alien menace known as
Giygas by 4 young children, led by
Onett native,
Ness, with
PSI powers and friendship. (EarthBound)
A timequake occurs, sending the citizens of the world back to 1991, where they must relive their lives in automatic pilot for ten years. (Timequake)
An extraterrestrial obelisk found on the Moon, prompting an investigation flight to Jupiter (Saturn in the book), which is sabotaged by
HAL 9000 (2001: A Space Odyssey by
Arthur C. Clarke and
Stanley Kubrick] The film's sequel,
2010: The Year We Make Contact, offers a slightly different timeline, placing the discovery of the lunar monolith in 1999, and the Discovery voyage in 2001.
2002
Eighteen months after the finding of a buried lunar anomaly, the manned nuclear spacecraft USSC Discovery XD-1 continues to Jupiter to investigate another anomaly - 2001: A Space Odyssey
2004
Supposedly the year that Max Headroom takes place.
Also supposedly the year in which the global warming events of The Day After Tomorrow occur.
March - A spaceship crashes into the
River Thames, triggering a worldwide red alert as part of a scheme by the alien
Slitheen to turn the Earth into a radioactive fuel dump (Doctor Who - Aliens of London/World War Three).
December 25 - the Guinevere One probe is due to land on
Mars, but goes missing as the alien
Sycorax invade Earth - Doctor Who - The Christmas Invasion.
2009
Max Guevera and 11 other transgenics escape from the government facility code-named Manticore; months later, terrorists detonate an electro-magnetic pulse device which devastates civilization. Dark Angel
June 1 - The Pulse, the deployment of an
EMP weapon, destroys a significant amount of the computer-based infrastructure in the U.S., in turn leading to economic and social breakdown across the country. (Dark Angel)
October 19 - The giant solar flare destroys the planet Earth. (Knowing)
2010
Events of 2010: Odyssey Two. David Bowman, now a magnetic being, returns to Earth, and later on merges with
HAL 9000.
Jupiter explodes, forming Lucifer, a small sun.
John Boone becomes the first human to set foot on Mars at age 38. (Mars trilogy)
2012
In an underground bunker in
Utah, a
Dalek, the last of its race, gets loose and kills 200 people before it is stopped (Doctor Who - Dalek)
December 22 - Alien colonization begins on Earth. (The X-Files)
The events of the first season of the TV series Dark Angel.
The year the
microprocessor becomes obsolete, being replaced by SMT — Single Molecule Transfer technology, according to the 2005 Doctor Who episode The Long Game.
November - In polluted, rainy L.A., former Blade Runner officer Rick Deckard is picked up by Gaff in a flying Police
Spinner, to do one more job - Blade Runner, 1982
2020
Arno Stark, the future wearer of the
Iron Man armor, travels back in time to battle
Spider-Man.
In The Terminator (1984), while under LAPD interrogation in 1984,
Kyle Reese (played by actor
Michael Biehn) states that 2021 was the year he joined the human resistance.
2022
New York City has become overpopulated with 40 million starving citizens. (Soylent Green)
Mars 2 Recovery is en route to investigate the non-response of the Mars-1 Crew - Mission to Mars
Citizens against progress rise up in an attempt to stop the Space Gun and its launch of a pair of young explorers - (Things to Come film, 1936)
2037
August 20 - Time traveller Alex Hartdegen abruptly stops, witnessing a
Lunar catastrophe raining down on Earth - Simon Wells' production The Time Machine, 2002
May 14 - "
The Last Question" is first asked of the computer Multivac, in the
Isaac Asimov story of that title. On the same date, according to the same story, Earth becomes fully powered by
solar energy, eliminating the need for consumption of
fossil fuels.
Detectives David Hume and Ian Farve serve in the Citizens Protection Bureau (
Total Recall 2070)
A force of
Cybermen try to take over the Gravitron weather control installation on the Moon to alter Earth's weather and wipe out all life. They are stopped by the
Second Doctor and his companions (Doctor Who - The Moonbase).
A last inhabitant of Earth, a mutant, encounters an astronaut from the past. They both travel back in time to stop a
bacterial disaster, but the astronaut dies - The Man Who Was Never Born episode of The Outer Limits, 1963
Arnold Rimmer fails to fix a drive plate on the mining ship Red Dwarf. A cadmium II radiation blast kills him and 1,167 people. The only survivor is Dave Lister, who is in stasis.1
Space station Babylon 4 disappears shortly after construction is finished.
2256
Construction is finished on space station Babylon 5.
2257-2262
The events of Babylon 5, starting with the attempted assassination of
Vorlon ambassador Kosh upon his arrival on the station.
2258
Vulcan is destroyed by the red matter weapon launched by Nero's ship. (Star Trek).
2260
During the mostly covert Corporation Wars, Izanagi Corporation's research facility on Lamdon 3 was destroyed by a strike force from the Axon Research Corporation, despite the protection of the NEG ThunderCrash force. Axon was able to not only destroy the facility, but also retrieve the advanced plasma ion tank under development there. (Unreal series of PC games)
The alien probe returns to Earth to communicate with the humpback whales and Kirk and his crew travels back in time to 1986 to pick George and Gracie. (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home).
Klingon diplomats launch a peace initiative toward the United Federation of Planets, following the disastrous explosion of the energy facility on Praxis. This leads to the
Khitomer Accords and peace between the Empire and the UFP. (Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country)
The Tomed Incident occurs, between the United Federation of Planets and the Romulan Star Empire. Several thousand beings on both sides die. The Romulans enter a period of isolationism, although several clashes occur with the Klingon Empire. (Star Trek: The Next Generation)
2318
The Journeyman Project is the year that extraterrestrials land on Earth to form a permanent alliance.
The colony ship Bellerophon arrived at its destination Altair-4 ten years prior, but there has been no recent contact. The United Planets Cruiser C-57D journeys to the
Altair system to search for survivors of the Bellerophon - Forbidden Planet novel
2373
The Borg ship tries to assimilate Earth only to be defeated by the Starfleet armada led by the Enterprise and the Borg sphere travels back in time to prevent first contact and the Enterprisefollows the Borg. (Star Trek: First Contact).
Cruiser C-57D lands on Altair's 4th planet, and Cmdr. Adams finds the only colonist survivors are Dr Morbius and his daughter -Forbidden Planet novel
2391
Cmdr. Adams and the crew of the Cruiser C-57D return to Earth to relate their strange story of Altair-IV - with Robby the Robot -Forbidden Planet novel, 1956
Oceans cover the Earth except for a few natural and man-made atolls - and remnants of humanity. A new breed of human, called Mariner, helps a woman and a child in their quest for a legendary location, Dryland - Waterworld, 1995
A botched first contact between the Earth Empire and the
Draconian Empire leads to a short but bloody war that results in millions of dead. A peace treaty is negotiated and a frontier established between the two interstellar powers, but a cold war lasts for years afterward (Doctor Who - Frontier in Space).
2540
Raids on cargo ships, apparently by both sides, threaten to start a new war between the
Draconian and Earth Empires. However, when it is revealed that the
Daleks are responsible, the two empires form an alliance to battle the Daleks (Doctor Who - Frontier in Space).
Earth is in the grip of a new
ice age when a scientific team unearths an
Ice Warrior spacecraft beneath the glaciers, its crew in suspended animation (Doctor Who - The Ice Warriors).
By this century, time travel is commonplace. In one alternate future (later cancelled), Earth has long been devastated by an undisclosed conflict. (Star Trek: Enterprise episode, "Shockwave").
The decline and eventual end of the Earth Empire, as Earth's various colonies break away from it (Doctor Who - The Mutants).
Mechas, the next phase of intelligence on Earth, are involved in on-site excavation of a frozen-over NYC, when they discover a preserved android: a boy named David - AI: Artificial Intelligence 2002
Machinery rules the galactic universe, with humanoids and conscious robots in control, the human race is reduced to a state of apathy. (TV version of Dune)
The Great Revolt, a human rebellion against the machines, forcing human beings to use their minds for development and breeding; this leads to the formation of mental training schools and the discovery of the spice Melange, both of which would be the turning point for the human race. (TV version of Dune)
A creature with the ability to assume any shape departs this era for 20th century
Metropolis, and tries to imitate
Superman. (Superman (1st series) #87, February 1954).
50,000
200,000 (2,000th century)
The period of the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire. Earth is at its height, covered with megacities, with five Moons and a population of 96 billion, the centre of a galactic domain that covers a million worlds and a million species. However, its development is retarded for 91 years by the manipulations of news space station Satellite 5, until it is put back on track by the
Ninth Doctor (Doctor Who - The Long Game).
200,100
One hundred years on from The Long Game, mankind's development is still being obstructed, this time being kept docile by the watching of hundreds of deadly
game shows produced by the Badwolf Corporation (Doctor Who - Bad Wolf).
The Time Traveller encounters a garden world and sees Humanity has divided into the meek
Eloi on the surface and the subdwelling, cannibalistic
Morlocks - H. G. Wells' The Time Machine novel and films
~1,000,000
The Solar System is destroyed as the Human race leaves its cradle for the last time (Babylon 5).
~2,000,000
The
solar system is relocated two light years away by the
Time Lords and Earth is renamed Ravolox. When the ruse is discovered, the system is restored to its proper position (Doctor Who - The Mysterious Planet).
~3,000,000
Dave Lister awakens from stasis and the events of
Red Dwarf take place
The 57th Segment of Time, when solar activity wipes out all life on Earth. Refugees of humanity leave for the planet Refusis (Doctor Who - The Ark).
~30,000,000
The Time Traveler stops on a shoreline, finding a dark world where intelligent life is wiped out, the day/night sequence has vanished, the air thinner, and the Moon gone. Shivering, and with darkness and falling snow, he stares as a
solar eclipse begins- and a single football-shaped creature hops about near him - H. G. Wells' novel The Time Machine
50,000,000
After humanity's final extinction, an insect-like race arises on Earth and becomes the dominant species. They are possessed by the Great Race of Yith, who have been forced to leave their previous home on a planet near Taurus. At some point in the future, this race will also die out, and the Yithians will be forced to relocate again to Mercury, taking over the bodies of a plant-race living there. (
H.P. Lovecraft)
Homo Sapiens have completely died out along with large
predators and
herbivores. The primary predators are descendents of rodents, appearing as new forms of bears, wolves, and large cats. Even penguins evolve into a kind of small whale - Dougal Dixon 's After Man, 1981
The world now contains one continent (much like
Pangea) and one global ocean. Most of the world is a
desert. The world is inhabited by many species of
worm, flying
fish, arboreal intelligent
squid and hopping
snails. (
The Future Is Wild)
6,354,279th century
635,427,810
Time Traveller Alex Hartdegen escapes from the Morlocks, but emerges to see the rust-colored clouds and sunlight of the far future and a broad Moon-like landscape laid waste to the horizon - and wonders who the bipeds are, walking in a line in the distance- Simon Wells' production The Time Machine, 2002
Europe and parts of Africa and Asia disappear and are replaced by a primeval continent (Darwinia (novel)).
"1993"
The Red Dwarf crew travels into the far distant future to a point after the Universe has begun collapsing towards a
Big Crunch, causing time to run backwards until it is the equivalent of 1993 on Earth again (or 3991, as the locals write it). They spend three weeks in Nodnol (
London backwards). In the novel Backwards, they arrive to collect Lister in Niagara Falls in the year 9891 (1989).
100 trillion- The stars and suns have burnt out as the end of the universe approches. The remnants of the human race lives in silos, trying to get to a last paridise, utopia. the events of Doctor Who (
utopia)
The Inquisitor decides there is no afterlife or god, and that the only purpose in existence is to lead a worthwhile life. So, he constructs a time machine to judge every person in history. (Red Dwarf)
The guru Gaspar and the God of War, Spekkio, await the ones who will slay Lavos and its spawn. (Chrono Trigger) (However, the timeline of Chrono Trigger is completely independent of our Earth's).
Beyond the end of time
Climax of
Isaac Asimov's story
The Last Question. The end of time itself is said to be ten trillion years in the future, and the climax of the story occurs even later, after a "timeless interval".
This article was nominated for deletion. So that it isn't lost forever, I'm saving a copy here. Information
Science fiction and other related fields of
fiction are often set in the future, or at least involve events in times that have not yet occurred. This list is a chronological collection of significant events from various works of such fiction. It includes some events that were set in the future when the fiction containing them was first written but which have now been overtaken by real
history, becoming a form of
alternate history or
failed prediction in the process.
It is rarely true that science fiction writers are seriously attempting prediction — the needs of the story are usually the primary concern, and science fiction stories are often more about the present in which they are written than the future in which they are supposedly set.
A passing comet rips people, land, and air off the
Earth. The small group takes refuge in a volcano on Comet Gallia. Calculating passing Saturn and a return to Earth in two years, the group begins to build a makeshift balloon and gondola - Off On a Comet by Jules Verne.
1880
Prof. Von Hardwigg and his party descend into an Icelandic mountain in search of missing explorer Arne Saknussem and discover an unknown sea world with monsters - Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne, 1864. *(In the 1959 film, he is known as Prof. Lindenbrook)
1894
The Time Traveller sets the levers on his machine in motion, for his journey to the future - The Time Machine by
H. G. Wells, 1895.
In a gun-launched capsule, French astronomers take A Trip to the Moon and escape from Selenites -
Georges Melies' B&W fantasy, 1902.
1905
Martian three-legged ' fighting machines ' invade southern England in The War of the Worldsby H. G. Wells (written in 1898).
1910
When the orbit of
Comet Halley intersects with the Earth, catastrophe ensues, but the comet gases cause an alteration of human psychology to a more rational thought-process - as revealed In the Days of the Comet by H. G. Wells (written in 1906).
1917
March 5 - British
RFC Flt. Lt. Decker is lost over France - and flies through a white cloud - but returns unexpectedly, a changed man. The Twilight Zone episode The Last Flight.
September 9 - George, the Time Traveller, encounters his friend Filby, but it's actually Filby's now grown son James, who advises his father was lost in the
Great War - George Pal's production The Time Machine, 1960.
Global Airlines 33 leaves the
Jurassic Age in its hope to return to 1961. Instead, the jet airliner is flying over the 1939 New York World's Fair. The Twilight Zone episode The Odyssey of Flight 33.
1940
At the home of Everytown resident John Cabal, his contemporaries discuss the prospect of war. But Cabal interjects ' If we don't end war, war will end us '. Then over the
wireless, reports announce that enemy bombers are approaching - H. G. Wells' filmThings to Come, 1936
June 10 - Thinking he's having a problem with his machine, George halts his progress in time-travel and is stunned to witness ' flying machines ' battling above London - George Pal's production The Time Machine, 1960.
1950
Politicians and engineers battle themselves, deception, and nature in the quest to build an undersea tunnel from England to the US- Transatlantic Tunnel, 1935.
1951
An air force crew and scientists at Polar Expedition Six, the Arctic, discover a crashed saucer and fight for their lives against an 8-foot, plant-based, humanoid alien - The Thing From Another World.
A saucer suddenly lands in a
Washington D.C. field, and a humanoid visitor steps out, with a message for Humanity. He's preceded by a towering silver robot, whom the visitor calls Gort - The Day The Earth Stood Still, based upon Harry Bates' short story Farewell to the Master, 1940.
The U.S. government adopts the designs of von Braun and Willy Ley, establishing the National Council of Astronautics and theUS Space Force - Man Conquers Space 2006.
1955
November 15 - Doc Brown falls and hits his head. He then has a vision of a mechanism allowing for time travel, the
Flux Capacitor - Back to the Future, 1985.
1959
British RFC flyer Decker emerges from a cloud to land his
SPAD XIII at a modern USAF base in France, unprepared to encounter an old friend he'd deserted - The Twilight Zone episode The Last Flight.
Seeds of a semi-nuclear Little War begin to sprout; over decades, it will destroy Washington D.C. and surrounding areas (novel version of Logan's Run).
1961
Capt. Farver and the New York-bound flight of Global Airlines 33 find themselves drastically increasing speed in The Twilight Zone episode The Odyssey of Flight 33.
The winged Saturn launch vehicle completes Wheel Space Station 1, operational with a crew of 45. Eagle One lands on the
Moon July 1963, followed by Eagle Two and Eagle Three - Man Conquers Space, 2006.
1964
Trent, a man with a glass hand and no memories, is hunted by aliens from a thousand years in the future - Harlan Ellison's Demon with a Glass Hand, episode of The Outer Limits
1966
August 11 - The Time Traveller encounters his old friend's son James again, now elderly, just prior to a
nuclear explosion -
George Pal's production The Time Machine, 1960.
After three decades of global war, a great plague wipes out most of the people on Earth. (Things to Come film, 1936)
1967
A computer malfunction sends a group of American nuclear bombers on an attack course toward Moscow. (The novel version ofFail-Safe)
A possible setting of Doctor Who's "
UNIT Era". It is also possible that it takes place during the 1980s.
1970
An older John Cabal, a member of the global 'Wings Over the World', lands his flying wing
aeroplane in world-war torn Everytown. He advises that peace has arrived, but the town's head, 'The Boss', does not approve. (Things to Come film, 1936)
1972
February - Astronaut George Taylor and three other volunteers (John Landon, Dodge and Stewart) depart Earth from Cape Kennedy on a mission that will take them 2,000 years into the future. (Planet of the Apes)
1973
Designed by Adm.
Harriman Nelson (USN-Ret), the nuclear supersub
USOS Seaview, with its transparent hull-plating 'window' nose section, undergoes radio silence and deep-diving trials in the
Arctic Ocean.
A manmade superflu breaks out and kills 99.4 percent of the population of the planet (The Stand by
Stephen King).
1984
April - Winston Smith, a secretly rebellious file clerk in the Ministry of Truth, is arrested and tortured by
Big Brother (Nineteen Eighty-Four by
George Orwell and its two film versions).
The first T-800 series
Terminator arrives, sent back in time by Skynet in an attempt to prevent the birth of resistance leader John Connor by killing his mother Sarah before he is even conceived. The John Connor of 2029 sends Kyle Reese back to defend Sarah from the Terminator. He knows that Reese, though doomed, will fall in love with his mother and is, in fact, his father (The Terminator).
1986
March 25 - An on-course NASA never embraces the shuttle program. Leaving from the orbiting
Aries command module, the
Challenger excursion module lands in Mangala Valley, Mars - Voyage by Stephen Baxter, 1997.
The year in which the living energy structure called the Mandragora Helix will be in a position to attack Earth again, as predicted by the
Fourth Doctor (Doctor Who: The Masque of Mandragora).
The Umbrella Corporation conducts experiments on the citizens of
Raccoon City using the Tyrant Virus, or
T-Virus for short, which is a mutagenic virus developed to create Bio-Organic Weapons, or BOWs for short. (
Resident Evil)
All Year - The world is saved from the alien menace known as
Giygas by 4 young children, led by
Onett native,
Ness, with
PSI powers and friendship. (EarthBound)
A timequake occurs, sending the citizens of the world back to 1991, where they must relive their lives in automatic pilot for ten years. (Timequake)
An extraterrestrial obelisk found on the Moon, prompting an investigation flight to Jupiter (Saturn in the book), which is sabotaged by
HAL 9000 (2001: A Space Odyssey by
Arthur C. Clarke and
Stanley Kubrick] The film's sequel,
2010: The Year We Make Contact, offers a slightly different timeline, placing the discovery of the lunar monolith in 1999, and the Discovery voyage in 2001.
2002
Eighteen months after the finding of a buried lunar anomaly, the manned nuclear spacecraft USSC Discovery XD-1 continues to Jupiter to investigate another anomaly - 2001: A Space Odyssey
2004
Supposedly the year that Max Headroom takes place.
Also supposedly the year in which the global warming events of The Day After Tomorrow occur.
March - A spaceship crashes into the
River Thames, triggering a worldwide red alert as part of a scheme by the alien
Slitheen to turn the Earth into a radioactive fuel dump (Doctor Who - Aliens of London/World War Three).
December 25 - the Guinevere One probe is due to land on
Mars, but goes missing as the alien
Sycorax invade Earth - Doctor Who - The Christmas Invasion.
2009
Max Guevera and 11 other transgenics escape from the government facility code-named Manticore; months later, terrorists detonate an electro-magnetic pulse device which devastates civilization. Dark Angel
June 1 - The Pulse, the deployment of an
EMP weapon, destroys a significant amount of the computer-based infrastructure in the U.S., in turn leading to economic and social breakdown across the country. (Dark Angel)
October 19 - The giant solar flare destroys the planet Earth. (Knowing)
2010
Events of 2010: Odyssey Two. David Bowman, now a magnetic being, returns to Earth, and later on merges with
HAL 9000.
Jupiter explodes, forming Lucifer, a small sun.
John Boone becomes the first human to set foot on Mars at age 38. (Mars trilogy)
2012
In an underground bunker in
Utah, a
Dalek, the last of its race, gets loose and kills 200 people before it is stopped (Doctor Who - Dalek)
December 22 - Alien colonization begins on Earth. (The X-Files)
The events of the first season of the TV series Dark Angel.
The year the
microprocessor becomes obsolete, being replaced by SMT — Single Molecule Transfer technology, according to the 2005 Doctor Who episode The Long Game.
November - In polluted, rainy L.A., former Blade Runner officer Rick Deckard is picked up by Gaff in a flying Police
Spinner, to do one more job - Blade Runner, 1982
2020
Arno Stark, the future wearer of the
Iron Man armor, travels back in time to battle
Spider-Man.
In The Terminator (1984), while under LAPD interrogation in 1984,
Kyle Reese (played by actor
Michael Biehn) states that 2021 was the year he joined the human resistance.
2022
New York City has become overpopulated with 40 million starving citizens. (Soylent Green)
Mars 2 Recovery is en route to investigate the non-response of the Mars-1 Crew - Mission to Mars
Citizens against progress rise up in an attempt to stop the Space Gun and its launch of a pair of young explorers - (Things to Come film, 1936)
2037
August 20 - Time traveller Alex Hartdegen abruptly stops, witnessing a
Lunar catastrophe raining down on Earth - Simon Wells' production The Time Machine, 2002
May 14 - "
The Last Question" is first asked of the computer Multivac, in the
Isaac Asimov story of that title. On the same date, according to the same story, Earth becomes fully powered by
solar energy, eliminating the need for consumption of
fossil fuels.
Detectives David Hume and Ian Farve serve in the Citizens Protection Bureau (
Total Recall 2070)
A force of
Cybermen try to take over the Gravitron weather control installation on the Moon to alter Earth's weather and wipe out all life. They are stopped by the
Second Doctor and his companions (Doctor Who - The Moonbase).
A last inhabitant of Earth, a mutant, encounters an astronaut from the past. They both travel back in time to stop a
bacterial disaster, but the astronaut dies - The Man Who Was Never Born episode of The Outer Limits, 1963
Arnold Rimmer fails to fix a drive plate on the mining ship Red Dwarf. A cadmium II radiation blast kills him and 1,167 people. The only survivor is Dave Lister, who is in stasis.1
Space station Babylon 4 disappears shortly after construction is finished.
2256
Construction is finished on space station Babylon 5.
2257-2262
The events of Babylon 5, starting with the attempted assassination of
Vorlon ambassador Kosh upon his arrival on the station.
2258
Vulcan is destroyed by the red matter weapon launched by Nero's ship. (Star Trek).
2260
During the mostly covert Corporation Wars, Izanagi Corporation's research facility on Lamdon 3 was destroyed by a strike force from the Axon Research Corporation, despite the protection of the NEG ThunderCrash force. Axon was able to not only destroy the facility, but also retrieve the advanced plasma ion tank under development there. (Unreal series of PC games)
The alien probe returns to Earth to communicate with the humpback whales and Kirk and his crew travels back in time to 1986 to pick George and Gracie. (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home).
Klingon diplomats launch a peace initiative toward the United Federation of Planets, following the disastrous explosion of the energy facility on Praxis. This leads to the
Khitomer Accords and peace between the Empire and the UFP. (Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country)
The Tomed Incident occurs, between the United Federation of Planets and the Romulan Star Empire. Several thousand beings on both sides die. The Romulans enter a period of isolationism, although several clashes occur with the Klingon Empire. (Star Trek: The Next Generation)
2318
The Journeyman Project is the year that extraterrestrials land on Earth to form a permanent alliance.
The colony ship Bellerophon arrived at its destination Altair-4 ten years prior, but there has been no recent contact. The United Planets Cruiser C-57D journeys to the
Altair system to search for survivors of the Bellerophon - Forbidden Planet novel
2373
The Borg ship tries to assimilate Earth only to be defeated by the Starfleet armada led by the Enterprise and the Borg sphere travels back in time to prevent first contact and the Enterprisefollows the Borg. (Star Trek: First Contact).
Cruiser C-57D lands on Altair's 4th planet, and Cmdr. Adams finds the only colonist survivors are Dr Morbius and his daughter -Forbidden Planet novel
2391
Cmdr. Adams and the crew of the Cruiser C-57D return to Earth to relate their strange story of Altair-IV - with Robby the Robot -Forbidden Planet novel, 1956
Oceans cover the Earth except for a few natural and man-made atolls - and remnants of humanity. A new breed of human, called Mariner, helps a woman and a child in their quest for a legendary location, Dryland - Waterworld, 1995
A botched first contact between the Earth Empire and the
Draconian Empire leads to a short but bloody war that results in millions of dead. A peace treaty is negotiated and a frontier established between the two interstellar powers, but a cold war lasts for years afterward (Doctor Who - Frontier in Space).
2540
Raids on cargo ships, apparently by both sides, threaten to start a new war between the
Draconian and Earth Empires. However, when it is revealed that the
Daleks are responsible, the two empires form an alliance to battle the Daleks (Doctor Who - Frontier in Space).
Earth is in the grip of a new
ice age when a scientific team unearths an
Ice Warrior spacecraft beneath the glaciers, its crew in suspended animation (Doctor Who - The Ice Warriors).
By this century, time travel is commonplace. In one alternate future (later cancelled), Earth has long been devastated by an undisclosed conflict. (Star Trek: Enterprise episode, "Shockwave").
The decline and eventual end of the Earth Empire, as Earth's various colonies break away from it (Doctor Who - The Mutants).
Mechas, the next phase of intelligence on Earth, are involved in on-site excavation of a frozen-over NYC, when they discover a preserved android: a boy named David - AI: Artificial Intelligence 2002
Machinery rules the galactic universe, with humanoids and conscious robots in control, the human race is reduced to a state of apathy. (TV version of Dune)
The Great Revolt, a human rebellion against the machines, forcing human beings to use their minds for development and breeding; this leads to the formation of mental training schools and the discovery of the spice Melange, both of which would be the turning point for the human race. (TV version of Dune)
A creature with the ability to assume any shape departs this era for 20th century
Metropolis, and tries to imitate
Superman. (Superman (1st series) #87, February 1954).
50,000
200,000 (2,000th century)
The period of the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire. Earth is at its height, covered with megacities, with five Moons and a population of 96 billion, the centre of a galactic domain that covers a million worlds and a million species. However, its development is retarded for 91 years by the manipulations of news space station Satellite 5, until it is put back on track by the
Ninth Doctor (Doctor Who - The Long Game).
200,100
One hundred years on from The Long Game, mankind's development is still being obstructed, this time being kept docile by the watching of hundreds of deadly
game shows produced by the Badwolf Corporation (Doctor Who - Bad Wolf).
The Time Traveller encounters a garden world and sees Humanity has divided into the meek
Eloi on the surface and the subdwelling, cannibalistic
Morlocks - H. G. Wells' The Time Machine novel and films
~1,000,000
The Solar System is destroyed as the Human race leaves its cradle for the last time (Babylon 5).
~2,000,000
The
solar system is relocated two light years away by the
Time Lords and Earth is renamed Ravolox. When the ruse is discovered, the system is restored to its proper position (Doctor Who - The Mysterious Planet).
~3,000,000
Dave Lister awakens from stasis and the events of
Red Dwarf take place
The 57th Segment of Time, when solar activity wipes out all life on Earth. Refugees of humanity leave for the planet Refusis (Doctor Who - The Ark).
~30,000,000
The Time Traveler stops on a shoreline, finding a dark world where intelligent life is wiped out, the day/night sequence has vanished, the air thinner, and the Moon gone. Shivering, and with darkness and falling snow, he stares as a
solar eclipse begins- and a single football-shaped creature hops about near him - H. G. Wells' novel The Time Machine
50,000,000
After humanity's final extinction, an insect-like race arises on Earth and becomes the dominant species. They are possessed by the Great Race of Yith, who have been forced to leave their previous home on a planet near Taurus. At some point in the future, this race will also die out, and the Yithians will be forced to relocate again to Mercury, taking over the bodies of a plant-race living there. (
H.P. Lovecraft)
Homo Sapiens have completely died out along with large
predators and
herbivores. The primary predators are descendents of rodents, appearing as new forms of bears, wolves, and large cats. Even penguins evolve into a kind of small whale - Dougal Dixon 's After Man, 1981
The world now contains one continent (much like
Pangea) and one global ocean. Most of the world is a
desert. The world is inhabited by many species of
worm, flying
fish, arboreal intelligent
squid and hopping
snails. (
The Future Is Wild)
6,354,279th century
635,427,810
Time Traveller Alex Hartdegen escapes from the Morlocks, but emerges to see the rust-colored clouds and sunlight of the far future and a broad Moon-like landscape laid waste to the horizon - and wonders who the bipeds are, walking in a line in the distance- Simon Wells' production The Time Machine, 2002
Europe and parts of Africa and Asia disappear and are replaced by a primeval continent (Darwinia (novel)).
"1993"
The Red Dwarf crew travels into the far distant future to a point after the Universe has begun collapsing towards a
Big Crunch, causing time to run backwards until it is the equivalent of 1993 on Earth again (or 3991, as the locals write it). They spend three weeks in Nodnol (
London backwards). In the novel Backwards, they arrive to collect Lister in Niagara Falls in the year 9891 (1989).
100 trillion- The stars and suns have burnt out as the end of the universe approches. The remnants of the human race lives in silos, trying to get to a last paridise, utopia. the events of Doctor Who (
utopia)
The Inquisitor decides there is no afterlife or god, and that the only purpose in existence is to lead a worthwhile life. So, he constructs a time machine to judge every person in history. (Red Dwarf)
The guru Gaspar and the God of War, Spekkio, await the ones who will slay Lavos and its spawn. (Chrono Trigger) (However, the timeline of Chrono Trigger is completely independent of our Earth's).
Beyond the end of time
Climax of
Isaac Asimov's story
The Last Question. The end of time itself is said to be ten trillion years in the future, and the climax of the story occurs even later, after a "timeless interval".