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[Method of Madness]

17776 came out a few years ago, it's a long story that, like the title suggests, takes place in the year 17776 in a world where no humans have been born or died since the 2020s. Football is different in the future. That's all I'll say, read it!


20020 is a sequel that also takes place in the titular year. Same main characters as 17776, it's being released three chapters a week for a month or so, four chapters are out and so far I like it just as much if not more.


Both could probably be considered spiritual sequels to The Tim Tebow CFL Chronicles which takes places in I think the near future? It came out in 2014 by the same guy (Jon Bois), but I'm pretty sure it's otherwise its own universe. The main character is Tim Tebow who joins the Canadian Football League, and football is...different. Read all three! I read CFL after I read 17776 a few years ago, just make sure to read 17776 before 20020, of course.

[N.N. Marf]

These both sound interesting, [digression]but it's offputting from the fiction to see explicitly mentioned future times. The easy reason is that it's lazy writing, but more seriously, it makes it difficult to get into the story, because there's always the thought in a reader that all the described, even if plausible about some time (after publication), it's not likely about that explicitly mentioned time---there's just too much time, too much possibilities, unless it's the near future that the ideas are plausible. But in the case of near-nonfictional fictional near-future,.. I'm not sure exactly what it is.
There are also science-fantasies whose diegetic timekeeping systems are overtly different from the ones we use, but that just makes it more complicated, and is something I rarely ever care about.
It's different about past times, but the result is still offputting. Unless I'm already familiar with the time period (i.e. I'm not), if it's a significant detail, I have to learn about it to understand that context, but if it's an insignificant detail, then it would be much cleaner to not mention it.
Usually I can just ignore it and it's not a problem, but I'll miss any additional meaning that might be derived from that, such as order of events, or interesting chronological systems.[/digression]

[LTK]

I'm actually reading 20020 right now! It's not by any stretch science fiction, even though it might appear that way at first. That's all I'm willing to say about it, you really have to read it for yourself.

[Method of Madness]

Yeah, I tried to think of several ways to reply to that, but like LTK said, just check it out. Read the first chapter or so of 17776, and you'll see what we mean.

[cesium133]

I'm actually reading 20020 right now! It's not by any stretch science fiction, even though it might appear that way at first. That's all I'm willing to say about it, you really have to read it for yourself.

It depends on what you mean by science fiction. It's not "hard" science fiction, since it makes no attempt to justify its premise using real-world science, but I'd still consider it science fiction, sort of like "Golf in the Year 2000". It's actually kind of interesting to compare and contrast the two -- "Golf" mentions the various technological developments that have happened since the 1890s, while 17776 emphasizes the lack of such developments. Without the evolution of thought that comes from one generation leaving and another entering, society stagnates.

(And I may have ended up spending much of last night reading all of 17776...)

[cesium133]

I finally got around to reading 20020. One thing that I didn't find addressed in it: obviously, college football is still a thing, but what happens to the colleges themselves? With no new generations coming up, there would be no new students. There may be a few that come back to get more degrees, but with tens of thousands of years, you could take every major and still have tons of time left over. And there are probably very, very few who would actually want to do that. So, presumably by 20020, there are no (or very few) students left. 17776 emphasized the lack of technological development, which likely means there is little research activity at these universities. Athough, who knows, maybe with all the time in the world and little inclination for scientific development, there could be a renaissance of the humanities -- though it seems unlikely, given the lack of intellectual interest in general. So, most likely, in 20020, all that's left of the universities is sports. Which, honestly, doesn't sound that surprising to me. 

[FreshScrod]

I finally got around to reading 20020. One thing that I didn't find addressed in it: obviously, college football is still a thing, but what happens to the colleges themselves? With no new generations coming up, there would be no new students. There may be a few that come back to get more degrees, but with tens of thousands of years, you could take every major and still have tons of time left over. And there are probably very, very few who would actually want to do that.

I think higher-education will always be around. Even if they only do research, there are some subjects that I think we'll never run out of fascinating questions. The "pure intellect" subjects like math or philosophy, or esthetics, definitely, but even experimental subjects like physics or chemistry - if we run out of physics to study, there's more chemistry, and if we run out of chemistry, there's more biology, etc. - there's always a more complex experimental subject.

17776 emphasized the lack of technological development, which likely means there is little research activity at these universities. Athough, who knows, maybe with all the time in the world and little inclination for scientific development, there could be a renaissance of the humanities -- though it seems unlikely, given the lack of intellectual interest in general. So, most likely, in 20020, all that's left of the universities is sports. Which, honestly, doesn't sound that surprising to me.

I didn't think of that. If there's no intellectual interest, then maybe "college" becomes all the tertiary college activities, but it could be more than just sports. It's kinda like how public libraries are becoming more like community centers, that happen to also have these whachamajigs they give out to some strange people - only joking, I love reading. Maybe some gradual changes that, at each moment, seem to preserve the identity of what it means to be a college, to something we might not recognize.
You know? I think the idea that football will survive so long, is a bit of a stretch. How many ancient games do we still play today? Especially if there's an unintellecual culture, I think the sports would be transformed so much, and the names of the sports, too. With so much time the same old things will get boring after a while.