Until The Recent Future, That Is

A sentence from an article I'm reading:

This would be like saying that there are no other planets outside the solar system, because we did not (until recently) have powerful enough telescopes to observe them ...

Near as I can tell, that discovery happened in 2002, four years after the article appeared.  The author banked that people would be reading his book around 2002 and won.  But what happens to that parenthetical "until recently" as the book ages?  How will readers in 3018—seventeen years after first contact—react to it?  What will they make of our 21^st Century gambles?

In order to appease whatever sense of humor their nanorganic hive-mind assemblages retain, I'll be larding my work with conjectures likely to be true by the time a member of the collective distributes its photonitelepathic imprint.  I'll start by slipping in references inspired by current events:

This would be like saying that people could still live in Lebanon, because (until recently) it had houses and an infrastructure ...

I'll exhaust near-future history quickly.  (Ain't to0 much important happening right now.)  Then the fun'll start:

This would be like saying that no clone of  Thomas Jefferson could ever become President, because (until recently) the Supreme Court had not decided that the 22^nd Amendment  only applied to the original ...

This would be like saying that no colony of human-Qiso'Jovian hybrids could successfully invade a HumaCorp-controlled planet, because (until recently) none had TelePortal™ technology capable of penetrating a military-grade ImpeneDome™ ...

This would be like saying that Jesus would never return again, because (until recently) no one believed He would also incarnate in non-photonitelepathic space ...

I still have oodles of future history to cover—not to mention chapters to write—so consider The Suggestion Box officially open.

Comments

[Bryan]

You sure you have your facts straight? Check out this news article.

Not that it matters much. I laughed my ass off reading this anyway.

[Chance]

"That would be like saying that excessive footnoting cannot literally kill a writer, because (until recently) no one had found David Foster Wallace's cold, oddly-twitching body, footnote 34(a)(x) --- the footnote to footnote 34(a), itself a footnote to 34, a six-page footnote in its own right --- still in his hand."

[Adam Kotsko]

Chance -- The concept is funny, but the rhythm is off.

[Kevin M.]

The first extrasolar planet was discovered in 1988, but that one wasn't confirmed until 2003. The first solidly confirmed exoplanet (51 Pegasi b) was discovered in 1995. I'm not sure what you're referring to with 2002... maybe recalling the confirmation of the 1988 exoplanet, but a year off?

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

This is what I get for relying on my "memory" instead of Google. (The nicest thing about a blog? Eventually, they'll be one and the same.) Anyhow, I based that observation on a Discovery Channel special I watched a few weeks back ... at about 4 AM. After I'd slept three hours the previous two days.

If I hadn't still been working—note the unusually early time-stamp—I'd have documented that "near as I can tell," but then again, had I done that, I probably wouldn't have even written the post, since "near as I [could've told]," I was mistaken. Aren't you glad I didn't? (I mean, you wouldn't know that Jesus came back not once, but twice.)

And Chance, I don't know what Adam's up to. I laughed aloud, frightened cats, and then had to wipe up the iced tea knocked over by frightened cats.

[Bryan]

I've never let fact-checking get in the way of an entertaining blog entry, Scott.

And I realize that probably sounded snarky and sarcastic, but I do think we're all the better for your rare lapse in documentation. Without you, how else could we warn the Pentagon that there would be flaws in the ImpeneDome™ design?

[Chance]

The timing is off, but it's still funny, because, see, it's David Foster Wallace dead.

Glad you liked it.

[Adam Kotsko]

It is still funny, yes. I was aiming for "constructive criticism."