There is an emotion, it’s somewhere between humor, irony, shame and embarrassment. When you look at Sci-Fi movies of the past, where their settings are now in contemporary time. I find myself filled with an odd new emotion. It’s a sense of shame and loss for a future we never get to enjoy because we aren’t there yet. I think it’s really quite a piquant emotion because it’s so terribly embarrassing. It’s 2011 and what massive advances have we developed? People haven’t changed any. I look out on the world and think that if anyone were to write stories based on the future to make it more honest and relevant and skip out on depictions of new inventions, instead concentrate on the daily trudge.

I can only draw parallels in my own meager experience, take for example our air conditioning equipment. Something that was invented in 1902 is still in use today. There isn’t anything really new about the technology and in 109 years we’ve done very little to change it. It’s that sense that I want to see in more fiction stories – that some things never get better, some technologies never develop beyond their humble beginnings, that in 2025 we’ll be doing roughly the same thing we did in 2011 and 2005 and 1997… although I have to tack on this last bit, that sometimes change comes because it has to. I think our out-of-control climate will definitely change things in a few years time, so perhaps it’s only disasters that push us along?