That’s what the ’80s had.
It was dystopias as far as the eye could see:
Blade Runner (’82), The Running Man (’87) and Akira (’88) are all set in 2019.
It seems the stress of the Cold War-ending Reagan era was a sweet-spot match with the (more or less) single generation distance of that future date. Not so near it’s not believable, but close enough to still cause anxiety.
The post-apocalyptic — notwithstanding The Day After and Threads — was not what it had been in its Golden Age of the ’70s. There was going to be a future after all. Sadly it would be less than ideal.
