Researching The Future

The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary* describes the meaning of the word future as The time to come. The most important thing for me to decide is how much of the time will have come when FUTUREPERFECTED starts? It’s crucial. Too far in the future and technology will have advanced out of all recognition and the reference-points I want to pull on will be rendered meaningless. Not far enough… I have to stop there. I started looking into the near future and what’s potentially on offer and I quickly come to the conclusion that near means nearly now! The stuff that people are demonstrating is far future stuff with ‘but we need a little more time and it’ll be available, really soon!’

| Electronic circuits integrated into the skin | Cryogenics | Quantum Cryptography | The future of the PC |

What this all leads me on to is, that you don’t have to go that far into the future before things get interesting (not that things aren’t interesting now, I love the technology I have around me. It’s just that I need some literary devices). So, the timescale I have for my story is not that far in the future.

The other defining premise of my story is The Accident and this will help narrow things down a lot further. I’m hoping to get to within a year or two from the research I’ve carried out – more later.

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*The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary from Oxford University Press – I have the hardback fifth edition, 2002. I looked into the online version which I’d love and would use religiously but it costs £215 + VAT for a years personal subscription! (That’s a lot of comics) Then I found Oxford Dictionaries that provides some free online access. There’s a blog as well – OxfordWords blog and while it may not be everyone’s first choice of blogs when logging in, I found a cool entry on phobias.

RP