Near future in fiction

[1][2][3][4] On the other hand, works set in the near future also carry the risk of quickly becoming obsolete due to trends or events that its authors failed to correctly predict.

[4] Initially most works set in the near future, described as scientific romance or utopias, were more optimistic, celebrating the expected advances in technological progress; an example of this trend is Jules Verne's Paris in the Twentieth Century (1863).

[1][2] Those works dealt with issues such as environmental degradation (J. G. Ballard's The Drowned World, 1962), overpopulation (John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar, 1968), and oppressive political regimes (George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949, Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth's The Space Merchants, 1952, or Philip K. Dick's Time Out of Joint, 1959).

[4] Late 20th century saw the rise of the cyberpunk genre, concerned with the new issues of the Computer Age, and newer works often deal with topics such as accelerating change, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence or nanotechnology.

[1][4] Near future science fiction is also seen in some games, like the Ace Combat series, which is set in an alternate universe where technology is advanced a small amount from the real world, with semi-futuristic weapons and vehicles like super-maneuverable drones.