How many years in the future is your story set?

[asakiyume]

The novel that I'm inching forward on (more like millimetering forward on) is set in the future, and that's got me thinking about what does and doesn't change in the future, or, to put it another way, how far in the future you'd have to go before something had disappeared or was forgotten entirely. Tech is easy to lose--it can be lost in 20 years, if it's replaced by other things. (This may not seem like a loss, but it is: the skill to use anything is still a skill, even if it's an obsolete skill.)

But other things really stick around--like religions. Go back a thousand years, and the big players that we've got on the religious field today were still there. A THOUSAND YEARS.** And not nation-states, but senses of peoples--they're tenacious, too. Tribalism I guess is the negative-connotation word for this.

I think of this, because some of the things authors want to get rid of by setting novels in the future are things like particular religions or national/tribal identity. And the truth is, I can pretty much accept that, if the story catches me up. It's only when I look at history that I get to thinking about plausibility and implausibility.

**It's true that how religions or the sense of being a people manifest themselves change--flavors of Buddhism or Christianity in 1015 was a lot different from those flavors in 2015, and that leaves lots of room for fun imagination. But the actual thing itself doesn't just disappear. Even religions that are no longer actively practiced remain alive culturally.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Which also gets into the fact that history can be deliberately manipulated, what story gets told, etc., and the maddening fact that straight-out lies can be remembered as history and then influence events on down through the years. [ETA: Which is what you're saying, dur. I started typing my answer after your first sentence, which is the equivalent of interrupting :-P]

Did you ever read the Oz books? Ozma of Oz had a magic carpet that would let her cross the Deadly Desert. it unrolled continuously in front of her and any people with her and rolled up continuously behind her and her party. That's always struck me as the perfect metaphor for people's sense of history, unless they exert themselves to keep that carpet from rolling up behind them. How much do people remember or know about family history? Without someone who's interested in the old stories, or in genealogy, not much. I don't know much beyond my grandparents' days. Fortunately my sister has been in touch with uncles--this is on one side of the family--and has saved stuff. And my dad has some records of the other side of the family. But in my own memory, the carpet has rolled up behind my grandparents' feet.

Ozma on the Magic Carpet

[greylistening.livejournal.com]

You're right, that *is* a perfect metaphor.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

:-)

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

Ditto this.

[sovay]

But in my own memory, the carpet has rolled up behind my grandparents' feet.

That's a heartbreaking image.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I feel more a sense of mild chagrin. It's not as if it's an uncorrectable state: I can unroll the carpet back further by talking with my sister and my father. If no one knew those stories, I'd feel more cut up about it.