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The comic book adaptation “X-Men: Days of Future Past” (2014) takes place in the year 2023.
Daniel ArnetEditor of Sunday Blick magazine
Today, yesterday was more tomorrow: in the past, 2023 was more often than other years a projection screen for science fiction in various cultural sectors. Because both the feature films “The Purge: Anarchy” (2014) and “X-Men: Days of Future Past” (2014) as well as the TV series “WandaVision” (2021) and the computer game “Crysis 2” (2011) play in this year that we are living through.
Many a year serves as a vision of the future in some film or book of the preceding era. 2019 is the year of action for Ridley Scott’s (85) film “Blade Runner” (1982). And the main plot of the novel «2001: Space Odyssey» (1968) by Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008) created in 2001 – congenially filmed by Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999) – shows how astronaut Bowman experiences a space odyssey .
On March 21, 2023 there will be a “purge night”
Probably the most famous example is the novel «1984», which the English author George Orwell (1903-1950) wrote in 1948 and for which he simply swapped the last two digits of the year of origin in the book title. The dystopia of a total surveillance state has been proverbial since then: “Big Brother is watching you” – the big brother sees you.
From looking to beating up: In the visions for the future for the current year, things are more tangible. For example in the thriller «The Purge: Anarchy»: It is Tuesday, March 21, 2023, shortly before the «purge night» – in America from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. all emergency call systems are out of order and all crimes, including murder, are legal to reduce the crime rate and keep unemployment low. Pure anarchy!
No longer beings made of flesh and blood, but already versatile robots with superpowers – so-called Sentinels – hunt down mutants and people who help them in the comic film adaptation “X-Men: Days of Future Past”. want. The X-Men oppose the Sentinels, because whoever is not dead will be enslaved – and that in the year 2023.
Same timing, different idea: In the fourth part of the US TV series WandaVision, space agent Monica Rambeau returns to earth. Here she is given the task of solving a missing persons case in the city of Westview. But nothing gets into the city, nothing comes out. Then Rambeau lets a camera drone fly over the area – whereupon first the drone disappears in a strange energy field, then the agent herself.
The further away in time, the more realistic
Pretty detached and wacky visions from the past that have nothing to do with today’s reality. Or did “The Purge: Anarchy” anticipate the anarchist march of Bolsonaro supporters in Brasilia? Did «X-Men» address the current discussion about artificial intelligence? And did WandaVision warn of the dangers of 5G technology? Hardly likely.
It is also not to be assumed that the creators intended their works to reflect today’s realities. If they had wanted that, it would certainly have been possible to be more precise, because all these visions of the future are not ten years old. And in this period of time it would be foreseeable what could be real in the year 2023 – certainly no human-hunting robots or space agents returning to Earth.
It almost seems as if the closer to reality is, the further apart in time the origin and content of science fiction are. A whopping 36 years passed between the writing and the description of Orwell’s “1984” – and in the mid-80s one rubbed one’s eyes at what had happened. At the latest in 1990 with the fichen scandal in Switzerland and the NSA scandal in the USA in 2013, the surveillance state described by Orwell was real.
Here, too, the oldest work, which deals with 2023, looks the most realistic: the twelve-year-old computer game “Crysis 2”. Although the alien invasion (Ceph) is more fantasy than science fiction, the setting is frighteningly true: in 2023, humanity is on the brink of collapse after a multitude of climate catastrophes. After saving the world from an alien invasion in the final level, the game ends with the sentence: «They call me a prophet.»
“23 Skidoo” got everything rolling
What made 2023 so appealing in the past for such bleak visions of the times to come? It is probably due to the prime number 23, which is of central importance in human life: sperm and egg each contribute 23 chromosomes to fertilization, blood needs 23 seconds to flow through the human body, and the so-called biorhythm is 23 days.
“Twenty-three” is also a slang expression that has been recorded in the USA since 1899 and means “get away”, “disappear” and “bye”. In 1901 “skidoo” was added, which is derived from the verb “skedaddle” for “tower”. As a result, the idiom “23 skidoo” became a very common American idiom, especially in the 1920s, in an imperative sense: “Get lost!”
In 1967, US writer William S. Burroughs (1914–1997) took up the expression and published a short story entitled “23 Skidoo” – a story about an incomprehensible and incomprehensible conspiracy. The author Robert Anton Wilson (1932-2007), who was a friend of Burroughs’, took up the idea and, starting in 1969, together with Robert Shea (1933-1994), published the trilogy of novels «Illuminatus!», in which 23 was the number of misfortune, destruction and enlightened is.
From now on, everyone counts with the number: in the film “Latigo” (1971), the protagonist always bets all the money on roulette on the 23, in the thriller “Number 23” (2007) the number follows the actor Jim Carrey (61), and the novel “Passagier 23” (2018) by the German writer Sebastian Fitzek (51) claims that 23 people disappear from cruise ships every year without a trace.
There’s only “twenty-three skidoo!” say and get away – before the sea liner casts off from the safe harbor.
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