History Main / TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture

* ''TransformersTheMovie'' and the third season of ''[[WesternAnimation/TheTransformers the 1986 cartoon]]'' are set in the early 21st century (in the far-off year 2005), just far enough forward for Spike to have grown up and had a son. Likewise, ''TransformersEnergon'' is set just long enough after ''TransformersArmada'' for the human characters to have grown up.

** Then there's the 2007 episode "Utopia" which takes place in the year 100 Trillion but depicts humans as using almost exclusively 21st century technology.

* The setting of a bunch of episodes of ''Series/DoctorWho''. Note that many of the stories explicitly set in the 1990s and the 21st century aren't really Twenty Minute into the Future; they're really distant-future stories dated by a writer who didn't realize that the year 2000 really wasn't all that far off. However, ''The Invasion'' and subsequent UNIT stories were always intended to be set just a few years in the future. This was ignored in ''Mawdryn Undead'', but by UNIT's final classic-series appearance in ''Battlefield'', the setting was clearly re-established as the very-near future. The issue of "UNIT dating" (when exactly the UNIT stories take place, since there's a bucketload of contradictory evidence) is a major topic of debate among fans, has been parodied a number of times in the ExpandedUniverse and gets its own [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIT_dating_controversy Wikipedia entry]] (it also got {{lampshaded}} in the books and the New Series episode "The Poison Sky" by having Sarah Jane and the Doctor respectively say they "used to work for UNIT in the Seventies, or was it the Eighties?").

* ''Series/PowerRangersSPD''. RubberForeheadAliens live among us and no one seems bothered in the least by this. But if you happen to be a ''human'' with special genetic abilities, you're an outcast.

* ''{{Terminator}}'' takes place NextSundayAD in TheEighties, but features in its backstory a nuclear war that kills three billion people in 1997 (man, what's up with that year?), started by a self-aware computer program that controls all military software, and a planetary war between humans and machines that starts and ends before 2030.
** ''Terminator 2'', taking place in 1994, features a ScrewDestiny plot that creates a possibility of averting the 1997 holocaust. ''Terminator 3'', however, chooses to have that holocaust take place in the ''[[NextSundayAD year following its release]]'', effectively divorcing the series from RealLife history at that point.

* According to Creator/MichaelBay's ''TheIsland'', by 2017 we will have flying motorcycles, hovering trains in the deep South, and really ugly hotrods. Oh, and [[spoiler: a city of clones kept for their organs (which already seems archaic, as we can do the same thing with pigs)]].
%% Was that the right date? I don't remember.

* ''MinorityReport'' famously had a group of futurologists working on the staff of the movie to make the shown future as plausible as possible. Discounting the precognitives and the somewhat improbable traffic system, the 2048 future they came up with, with its omnipresent retinal scans and subsequent total loss of privacy (as well as businesses using said scans to bombard you with advertising) and gesture-based computing controls, certainly could happen.
%% I don't remember if that was the right date either.

* According to Creator/MichaelBay's ''TheIsland'', we will have flying motorcycles, hovering trains in the deep South, and really ugly hotrods. Oh, and a city of clones kept for their organs (which already seems archaic, as we can do the same thing with pigs).

* ''MinorityReport'' famously had a group of futurologists working on the staff of the movie to make the shown future as plausible as possible. Discounting the precognitives and the somewhat improbable traffic system, the future they came up with, with its omnipresent retinal scans and subsequent total loss of privacy (as well as businesses using said scans to bombard you with advertising) and gesture-based computing controls, certainly could happen.

* The setting of the movie ''Film/IRobot''. Chicago looks pretty much like here in 2008, but with sleek monorails replacing the elevated trains, [[CrystalSpiresAndTogas big shiny buildings with a lot of glass and open space]], long underground highways and sleek cars with automatic pilot. ...and sentient robots everywhere.

* In ''Literature/DragonsEgg'', The first human section is the year 2020 in a book written in 1980. There's not a lot of tech development though there are no personal computers and no internet. The idea of any computer time being such a valuable resource that you have to ''pay'' for in the year 2020 is kind of funny in retrospect.

* ''Literature/TimeScout'' implies that it's this, but is functionally the same as NextSundayAD. May be [[JustifiedTrope justified]] in that The Accident, a Class 0 ApocalypseHow might have stunted things.

* James P Hogan's Giant's Novel series is based in 2030s (it has a character born in 1984 who is 40 something at the time of the events of the novel). The series has mankind going from weaponized to no weapons somewhere around 2020 and having manned missions as far out as Jupiter. [[spoiler:The remains of aliens (or our ancestors anyway)]] are discovered on the Moon, [[spoiler:real aliens]] are found on one of the moons of Jupiter, and [[spoiler:more aliens show up and later suffer from FishOutOfTemporalWater with their own race due to their mode of transportation]].

** His [[Literature/CallahansCrosstimeSaloon Callahan series]] is set in pretty much here and now. Including the characters attending the launch of STS-28 and 29 when it actually happened (mostly [[http://callahans.wikia.com/wiki/Inconsistencies#Timing]])

* SpiderRobinson has a habit of setting stories five to ten years in the future and including elements such as zero-gravity vehicles, over-population to the extent that murder is no longer a crime even in ''Canada'', futuristic swear words ("You taken slot!") that have completely replaced our current Saxon words, and dilating doors" and a character glancing at his "watch finger". Robinson has in fact had to redate some of his own stories in reprint: the original (1982) edition of ''Mindkiller'' was set in 1995 and 1999, the reprint in 2005 and 2009.

* In ''Literature/DragonsEgg'', The first human section is the year 2000 in a book written in 1980. There's not a lot of tech development though there are no personal computers and no internet. The idea of any computer time being such a valuable resource that you have to ''pay'' for in the year 2000 is kind of funny in retrospect.
** Perfectly reasonable for a timesharing system, even today. However, what the grad student is doing with the computer doesn't seem like something that would have required more than a quite modest personal computer in 2000.

* CharlesStross' Halting State is set in about 2018. Apparently Scotland's independence vote went forward in 2012.

** ''LeagueOfExtraordinaryGentlemen: Black Dossier'' put the book's events ''in'' 1948, allowing them to [[spoiler:show a fallen Airstrip One government ten years later]].

* CharlesStross' Halting State is set in about 2016. Apparently Scotland's independence vote went forward in 2012.

* The ''FairlyOdddParents'' live action TV movie ''AFairlyOddMovieGrowUpTimmyTurner'' takes place thirteen years after the series, which apparently takes place in TheNewTens [[ComicBookTime nowadays]], setting it somewhere in the 2020s. Nothing really seems out of the ordinary from the early 2010s.

* The DLC Blood Dragon for ''FarCry3'' parodies this trope hard. "The year is 2007. It is the future."

** Widespead AI, which is the premise behind ''WesternAnimation/TheZetaProject'' spin-off, which shows more of the ''Batman Beyond'' world outside of Gotham.

** Don't forget widespead AI, which is the premise behind ''TheZetaProject'' spin-off, which shows more of the ''Batman Beyond'' world outside of Gotham.

* ''VForVendetta'' is set in the grim future of 1997, in a post-apocalyptic Britain ruled by Nazis. Some of the original comics used the tagline "Pray the future never needs... V For Vendetta!". The film adaptation shifts this into the near future as seen from 2006 (2020? 2027?), thinly veiled references to the Bush administration and all.

* The "psychedilic" trilogy of SF novels (''The Butterfly Kid'', ''The Unicorn Girl'' and ''The Probability Pad''), written and first published in or around [[TheSixties 1967]], were collectively described by one later reviewer as being like "a Flower Summer with videophones".

* ''{{X-Com}}: UFO Defense'', takes place in the year 1999, and was released in '93. ''Terror From the Deep'' is set in the year 2040, and from the look of things, the world didn't change one bit over the years.

* The FramingDevice storyline in the ''Franchise/AssassinsCreed'' games, first released in 2007, take place over the period of a few months in 2012. ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedIII'' takes this trope to [[UpToEleven its logical extreme]]: Desmond's storyline starts on October 31st 2012, ''one day'' after the game's initial release on Xbox360 and PlayStation3.

* David Foster Wallace's ''InfiniteJest'' was written in 1996, and although the time frame of the events taking place in the novel is never clearly established, it is heavily implied to be set in the first decade of the 21st century.