Lost Pasts

[steepholm]

I've long been interested in stories that take place in futures that were anticipated (by author and characters alike) but never came to pass in reality. Indeed, a couple of years ago I wrote what I think quite a good article on the subject. There, I concentrated on the First World War and its relationship to Golden Age children's fiction, because it's a rich source of such instances, but of course it's not unique. Around the same time I enjoyed reading my friend and colleague Christopher Hood's thriller, Tokyo 2020, topically set at the Olympic games that (at the time of original publication) were set to take place imminently. I think Chris may have since published a slightly amended version that moves the events of Tokyo 2020 to 2021, much as the IOC itself did, but I'll always have a fondness for the story as it was set in that liminal lost future, caught between anticipation and reality.

Lost futures are always fascinating, but I've recently noticed a complementary phenomenon, namely lost pasts. For example, I've just started watching Why Didn't I Tell You a Million Times? on Netflix, a series set partly in 2023 Japan, but with numerous flashbacks to 2021 and 2022 (as well as other times). But this isn't 2021-3 as they actually existed. This is a version of the very recent past in which Coronavirus is simply not a thing. No one wears masks, for one thing - even though pretty much everyone in Japan was wearing masks in reality (and most still are).

It would have been very easy to set the story just a few years earlier, to a point where this would not have been an issue, but the makers have decided to make it ultra-contemporary. They presumably did this with the intention of accentuating its relevance - but it's relevance to a life that Japanese people would like to have been living, not the one they actually did live.

I've noticed the same phenomenon in a few other programmes, such as The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House - but this is the first one where they've been so emphatic about the dates, with the constant flashbacks and flashforwards necessitating precise dates being displayed on screen every few minutes.

Have you noticed any other examples of this phenomenon, perhaps outside a Japanese context?

Comments

[calimac]

I wrote about one when the calendar ticked up to it. (15 years later, the one-time doctoral student is now a tenured professor at the University of Michigan, thanks very much.)

[sovay]

Indeed, a couple of years ago I wrote what I think quite a good article on the subject.

I feel I should have read this article at the time, but I am not sure that I did, and it's great, especially the readings of McCaughrean.

I will think about lost pasts. At the moment I'm having a lot of trouble just with the fact that it's 2023.

[edit] I'll always have a fondness for the story as it was set in that liminal lost future, caught between anticipation and reality.

This happened to the kdrama Crash Landing on You (사랑의 불시착, 2019), whose epilogue stretches over several years into a future that by the time I saw the series in the early summer of 2020, was in no way capable of coming to pass.

I am pretty sure that Ben Wheatley and Amy Jump's In the Earth (2021) belongs somewhere in this conversation, even though it's very slightly more on the lost future side of things.

[hoodcp.wordpress.com]

Many thanks for including mention of my novel Tokyo 20/20 Vision. I did indeed alter it to 2021 (just a few weeks after the book initially came out) - see https://hoodcp.wordpress.com/about-my-novels/book-tokyo-20-20-vision/.
The book still worked on the basis of there being spectators at Olympic events, which of didn't happen, and essentially worked as though COVID was in the past. I suspect that in a few years time people won't even remember whether any of the description was accurate to what actually happened or not.

Coincidentally, in terms of what you posted about, I've just finished listening to the audiobooks of Animal Farm and 1984. Neither of those were accurate... Were they? 😏

[ashkitty]

I don't watch much in the way of tv, especially modern-setting tv, but I remember thinking Only Murders in the Building was set in the present without Covid...