The most brutal 2022: “The Jetsons”, “Doom” and “Soylent Green”, the fictions that imagined the omicron year

Before we entered the 21st century, many would see it as an unattainable future. A chimera or unknown associated above all to hyper-developed settings or post-apocalyptic landscapes, but always anchored in science fiction. And yet here we are. With a pandemic at stake and some major technological breakthroughs, but without the wild predictions that, 50 or 100 years ago, the most imaginative minds conjectured.

Several of those predictions have been reaching their expiration date. There we have “2001: a space odyssey” (1968), Stanley Kubrick’s film that projected a beginning of the century with trips to Jupiter, among other feats; or “Blade Runner” (1982), which outlined a hypothetical 2019 inhabited by replicating androids; and even the anime “Akira” (1988), also set in 2019, but within the framework of a Third World War that, luckily, has not been unleashed in the real world.

In that genealogy of unfulfilled futuresThere are some pretty popular examples set against 2022 that we just hit. Check how much fiction and reality are alike.

“The Supersonics” (1962)

Although the series takes place in the year 2062, its main protagonist, the father of the family George Jetson, is 40 years old. I mean, the noble and hardworking Supersonic dad was born in 2022, according to the animated series created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. A fiction that showed spaceships and floating houses, and even a domestic worker made of metal and circuits: the remembered Robotina.

“The Jetsons” were the counterpart of “The Flintstones”, an animated family comedy set in prehistoric times. Hence, although rustic, they possess certain technologies such as stone and wood televisions, or airplanes propelled by birds. Like to think.

“Soylent Green” (1973)

It is striking that the title in Spanish of this film has been “When destiny reaches us”. Well, fate reached that 2022 imagined by director Richard Fleischer and who starred in Charlton Heston: a dystopian future, marked by the climate crisis and pollution. In that context,

The subtext of this film, very much in keeping with the time of the Cold War, has to do with the fear of a society similar to that of the communist regimes of that time. It is also worth remembering that the film is inspired by the novel “Make Room! Make Room! ” (1966), by Harry Harrison, which is even shorter in its projection, since It is set in a futuristic 1999.

“Doom” (1993)

This classic video game, often considered one of the best of all time, set a before and after in the FPS mode (‘first person shooter’, or games that take place in the first person, from the perspective of the protagonist). Its influence is such that it paved the way for other very popular ones like “Half-Life” (1998), “Counter-Strike” (1999) and “Call of Duty” (2015).

What is it about? Of a space soldier who must fight an invasion of demons from hell itself, in scenarios such as the two satellites of Mars, Phobos and Deimos. Although the information is not entirely accurate, some fans have found references to the date on which the story would take place, as the specialized portal Hobby Consolas points out that “according to the DOOM instruction manual on Super Nintendo, the game takes place in 2022” .