The influence of the Flash Gordon film serials on the 435 characters included below is obvious. Many are simply minor variations on Flash, Ming, Dale, Zarkov, and their rayguns, hawkmen, and rocket ships. Of all the “Futures” envisioned by authors writing in the 1950s and before, the earliest “Future” year might be the 1982 of the Power Nelson stories in Prize Comics, and the latest probably Clark Ashton Smith’s far-future Zothique Cycle of stories.
| Era The Future (Worlds of Tomorrow) |
| Alternative Names Futures studies, Futurology, Foresight, Science Fiction |
| Total Entries 435 |
| Articles Far future in fiction – Wikipedia Science fiction comics – Wikipedia Space opera – Wikipedia |
| Description The influence of the Flash Gordon film serials on the 435 characters included below is obvious. Many are simply minor variations on Flash, Ming, Dale, Zarkov, and their rayguns, hawkmen, and rocket ships. Of all the “Futures” envisioned by authors writing in the 1950s and before, the earliest “Future” year might be the 1982 of the Power Nelson stories in Prize Comics, and the latest probably Clark Ashton Smith’s far-future Zothique Cycle of stories.
The far future has been used as a setting in many works of science fiction. The far future setting arose in the late 19th century, as earlier writers had little understanding of concepts such as deep time and its implications for the nature of humankind. Classic examples of this genre include works such as H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine (1895) or Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men (1930). Recurring themes include… Utopias, eschatology, or the ultimate fate of the universe. Many works also overlap with other genres such as space opera, science fantasy or apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction… Brian Stableford and David Langford argue that the genre could not exist until the true scale of geological time, and the theory of evolution and its implications for the nature of humankind, were fully understood. Likewise, Russell Blackford tied the emergence of the genre with the more recent concept of deep time… Another recurring theme is the post-apocalyptic one, related to the Dying Earth genre, or the suppression of humanity by more powerful beings, such as robots, artificial intelligences, technologically advanced aliens, or god-like beings of pure energy. Where humanity is not being eradicated, space travel and time travel themes also make relatively frequent appearances, as tools of sufficiently advanced, future civilizations; the former theme also marks an overlap with the more epic works of the space opera genre… ~ Far future in fiction – Wikipedia
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