So what is driving this return to the present?
Perhaps in a world where genetic engineering and global terrorism are daily realities it's more compelling to speculate about where humanity is headed in the near term than where it will leap to.
If we look at popular sci-fi movies and tv shows of recent history it's easy to note that the ones who have achieved mainstream popularity are ones that take place in worlds that largely resemble our own. LOST, Heroes, The 4400, and Children of Men are all excellent examples of this.
One of the things I love about Sci-Fi (or speculative fiction if you prefer) is the constant emergence of new "lenses" writers place on both the future and the past. Retrofuturism, Cyberpunk, Postcyberpunk, Steampunk, Clockpunk, parallel universes, alien planets–I love to read all those stories.
However, I recognize that in a world where we have no idea what tectonic plate is going to shift beneath our feet from one day to the next, that most people would love to see a vision–speculative or not–of where we are heading.
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So what is driving this return to the present?
The near future is where I do my best speculating, for 2 reasons:
1. If the story's set near-term and only a couple things have changed, I can better judge its believability. If it's set so far in the future that everything's changed, for me it becomes just a fairytale without the speculative dimension.
2. On their own, whiz-bang far-future technologies don't do much for me. Partly because I think the technologies we're now (& imminently) coming up with have interesting implications I like seeing explored. And partly because I'm interested in how we use those technologies--what effects technology has on our laws, economies, interactions, etc.
e.g. I like the premise of the J.D. Robb books. They're set in about 30 years, and they're simplistic in terms of futuristic technologies and world-building. But Robb posits some interesting social/legal changes: A period of Urban Wars, followed by a ban on guns; and a period of intense computer hacking/terrorism followed by more monitoring and a decrease in the expectation of consumer privacy. The books don't have to be super sophisticated in their world building if they give me that kind of food for thought.
This near-future preference was discussed on Adventures in Ethics & Science a couple days ago. This described my feelings: "It makes it easier to get involved in the story if you can imagine yourself in that world -- or if you can see a trajectory by which your world could become that world."
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