May I just briefly mention how really frakkin’ weird I feel every time I think about the fact that I’m actually walking around in the year 2010?
It’s the curse of being a Gen-X sci-fi fan, I guess. Thanks to all the silly stuff that obsessed me as a kid and a teen, there are certain dates that hold a powerful resonance for me and probably don’t faze ordinary people in the least: 1999… 2001, of course… and now 2010. Still to come are 2015, 2019, and 2029, the Year of Darkness, in which Skynet comes up with its dastardly plan to end the human resistance once and for all. In the case of that one, I think I’ll forgo my usual lament that the real future doesn’t match the cinematic version…
Funny about 2010, and its predictions. Of course the Soviet Union missed the year by 21 years, and of course we’re nowhere near building a spaceship like the Leonov or Discovery — but what always amuses me is that according to a small scene between Heywood Floyd and Curnow, both Yankee Stadium and the Houston Astrodome still exist as baseball venues!
Although my inner pedant (OK, it’s more of an outer pedant) knows that we’re still in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the feeling that we’re not at the turn of the century any more is very strong this year. Those two zeros made it seem provisional somehow, but now the 20 is undeniable. Funny how these things matter at 4am.