Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? By the time we’ve figured it out, we’ve already gotten there. Examining a trend toward futuristic fiction, Bill Morris looks at the near future as a literary setting that both illuminates and supersedes the present:
…technology is changing so fast that there’s no longer a present; the future is already here, relentlessly unspooling into the past. Which presents its own counter-intuitive challenge, as Gibson sees it: “It’s harder to imagine the past that went away than it is to imagine the future.”