When is it set?

From doktorsleepless

When is it set?

Posted by Mark Crabtree on January 24, 2008 at 6:47pm

We got a bit of info on dating in issue four. imminent.sea addressed the state of futurism in "the first quarter of the 21st century", ran for seven years and shut down three years ago.

That puts us no later than the early 2030s, almost certainly earlier. Anybody got any thoughts or guesses to narrow it down?

Reply by hobofood on January 25, 2008 at 10:26am

2015 - this gives us 7 years to develop HUD contact lenses and supply them with power. 7 years to develop consumer-level implantable haptic feedback devices sounds about right to me.

Imminent.sea seems to be pretty analogous to Wired (except for the whole anonymity thing), maybe a little more underground, but it's definitely modeled on it. Wired in it's current incarnation started in 2001 (it actually started as a physical magazine in 1998), so it would shut down this year, making 2011 the year Doktor Sleepless is set. Of course, Imminent.sea is not Wired, but it's the best marker I can find.

All of the tech used in DS has it's building blocks right here. Warren said Hell, did you see the contact-lens HUD unit prototypes the other day? It's an IM lens for DOK. I'm barely six months ahead of the news and running for my life...

So all the technology is here right now, just some of it needs to mature, miniaturize and in some cases get better power supplies. I think it will happen in the next 7 years, and that's a pretty conservative guess on my part.

Reply by Spiraltwist on January 28, 2008 at 12:25pm

Interesting idea.

Reply by Mark Crabtree on February 3, 2008 at 9:19am

I like the ideas, but I think 2011 is a little too early. The Doktor talks about having invented a lot of stuff (clatter etc.), which was presumably before he left 3 years ago. Which would mean he was doing it now. 2015 sounds quite reasonable though.

The other thing is that Warren has suggested this series could last a few years, which would mean it would catch up with itself if it's set too early!

But maybe that's the plan? For it to start as SF and then let the world catch up.

Reply by Stephanie Wilson on February 4, 2008 at 4:47am

For it to start as SF and then let the world catch up.

This idea is both very scary and yet exhilirating at the same time.

Reply by Mike Hills on February 4, 2008 at 12:34pm

i concur. it shall be fun watching the world of today become that of Doktor Sleepless.

i look forward to reading #100 with my Clatter-equivalent.

still - all this makes me wonder - is this our first self-aware future? and how actively have we been able to shape it before? (seriously - tell me!). 'cause with Sleepless and Grinding.be and whatever else he conjures up with a wave of that magic cane, Warren's playing some part in shaping the future - and then quite possibly feeding the results back into later issues

(also - @hobofood - thanks for tip-off.. will read thru the SA forum QnA tomorrow)

Reply by hobofood on February 4, 2008 at 12:53pm

Here is the SA thread.

It's not really Sleepless-orientated, and you have to wade through quite a few nerds shitting themselves because WARREN ELLIS has posted on an INTERNET FORUM, but there is some good discussion in there.

As for the self-aware future, isn't our future always self aware? Take jetpacks, a staple of scifi from 50 years ago, and the minute they start looking feasible people started making them and strapping them onto themselves. I'm not saying that we will all be flying around like Iron Man in the next couple of years, but there are always people writing about the future and mentally challenged people taking the ideas and applying them to the real world.

Whenever it is set, Doktor Sleepless is definitely in the near future, and the building blocks for most of the technology already exists and when it becomes small enough, people are going to put this stuff under their skin, wire it into their eyeballs and when we have proper nano-scale sensors people will snort them just to find out what it's like. From cursory glances at BMEZine, there already seems to be a number of people who are capable of performing home surgery.

I'm rambling, but what I am trying to say is that I don't think we would have had a space-race if nobody had ever written about it, but that since the first minute somebody realised there were other planets out there that people were writing about landing on them.

Reply by Mike Hills on February 4, 2008 at 10:11pm

As for the self-aware future, isn't our future always self aware? Take jetpacks, a staple of scifi from 50 years ago, and the minute they start looking feasible people started making them and strapping them onto themselves. I'm not saying that we will all be flying around like Iron Man in the next couple of years, but there are always people writing about the future and mentally challenged people taking the ideas and applying them to the real world.

oh, i totally agree that SF has been a massive inspiration.. couldn't agree more.

but, it's one thing for it to paint a future that everyone then rushes off to build (which has been the case in the past - from Rockets, SpaceAge, to teh_matrix/internet, MMOs). It's another entirely unique thing, i'm thinking (could be wrong?), for us be self-aware of this act (having watched the creations of those past futures - and really, being a bit jaded about it - which i think is the essence of the crys of WheresMyJetPack .. Not My Future etc); and thus be able to perhaps apply selection criteria and choose from amongst the many possible futures for the best one. shaping the future as we create it at the same time.

previously you were either for or against really.. the old dichotomy.. progressives vs conservatives.. technologists vs Luddite's

someone called Doktor Sleepless the first post-Futurist fiction.

that resonated with me.

Futurists are dead - you can't predict a world changing this fast.

But you can try and shape it: we need a new word for those people. Futurors? i dunno.

now, if anyone reads this far they'll see i've de-railed the thread.

i think Sleepless is set in 2012. It's the magical year.

Reply by hobofood on February 4, 2008 at 12:54pm

Sorry, I switched from 2011 to 2015 halfway through. I think I meant 2015 all the way through.

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