100% no doubt The parable of the sower and subsequent book. I read that book - started reading it - in June this year and read it over about a month. It was very creepy to be reading a sci fy book set in the future that is now my present and while it is not as bad right now as Octavia Butler makes it out to be, we are definitely heading there if drastic action is not taken immediately.
Edit: the books in order: (Only two, sadly she died while writing the third but still both worth reading, there isn’t a clif hanger at the end) https://www.octaviabutler.com/parableseries
Absolutely this! Octavia Butler literally wrote a fascist American president with the slogan “Make America Great Again” in 1993.
A combination of all the worst bits of the worst ones
100% its cyberpunk. corpo takeover with having to use technology to get by even when it is bad for you.
Yeah, but where the hell are my leg implants that allow me to double jump and air dash already?
air dash is a skill. your just being lazy.
That would be cool…but I tell ya what, we have Ray Bans that you can talk to which require an account and act as a personal body cam to use your every waking moment for spying, registering shadow-accounts for everyone you interact with, and ai training.
How’s that sound?
(Man, we’re in the stupidest timeline aren’t we…)
We don’t even get cool neon signs, everything is sad beige now… :(
honestly the neon all over like tokyo is one of the more unrelistic aspects to me. same with the private link. all the ads will be straight to the optic nerve and it will be so dreary when looking at it plainly.
Makes me think of
LOL! Aerodynamic efficiency is great and all but I’m also already SO tired of every compact and crossover looking like a friggin’ jellybean.
Idiocracy/Dont look up/1984/Judge Dredd
My bets on Robocop style corporate dictatorship until terminator style annihilation occurs.
Star Trek was never on the cards.
Actually, star trek might be. In their lore, things got a lot worse before they got better.
World War 3 began in 2026 according to TNG, we’re close!
In the aftermath, the world became an irradiated apocalyptic hellhole for almost a century, most cities destroyed and governments collapsed. I’d say we’re well on our way to that state, question is whether or not we emerge better on the other side. I’d almost be okay with that if there was some assurance that humanity would come out as Star Trek afterwards.
Bell Riots never happened, that timeline is broken.
I’m going to go obscure here and say that the world of 2077 from the television show Continuum
It ran for a few seasons; I enjoyed it for the most part. Not the best, not the worst. But definitely in terms of the premise where Corporations have essentially bought out failing governments, leading to an advanced surveillance state, and anti-corporate terrorists, etc… etc…
WALL-E. We just don’t have a way to escape yet, but the rest is happening regardless.
I’m sure Bezass and Muskpoo got us covered, just most of us can’t afford to leave with them.
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That’s a very optimistic view of our future.
Her.
Given that we’ve already had a few suicides caused by (or at least exacerbated by) LLM chatbots, I think we’re already there.
1984
Idiocracy but mixed with the Neuromancer series and 1984.
Add a dash of « The Handmaid’s Tale »
More of a glug.
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"Lack of respect, wrong attitude, failure to obey authority. The Farm, immediately. - death sentence in Ellison’s book ‘A Boy and His Dog’
Awesome book. The whole series was good, except the last one.
Parable of the Sower
It was written as near future fiction anyway. In fact the dates mentioned in the book start out in our past. Just the catalyst events haven’t quite happened yet. Add a few years to the dates and I could see us heading towards that kind of societal break down.
This book is haunting. It made me seriously consider buying a gun. If I could convince my wife to read it, we’d probably have an armory by now.
Penultimate Truth. Predicted containing the cattle using fear of something that doesn’t even exist in reality.
Dune.
Not the cool parts, the Butlerian Jihad.
I’d have gone with WH40Ks war with the men of iron but there’s absolutely no chance we reach golden age of technology levels before we fuck ourselves.
Can we choose? I’ll pick the Matrix. Yes we are slaves to the machines, but at least they give us happy dreams
