It's a nice reminder not to believe the technohype. Most of the world changing-technology that's being hyped today isn't going to happen, and the world-changing technology that does happen isn't going to be what we expected.
For example, Blade Runner has iconic Japanese cultural domination themes (ads, company names etc) because Japan was overtaking the US economically in the '80s. Nobody expected decades of Japanese stagnation.
"The Space Merchants" still feels relevant because it's about the rise of multinationals, and they're still around. (England Made Me is about the same thing, but isn't science fiction.) "Rebel in Time" is about contemporary racism. "Grass", well, Grass is about a lot of things and it's hard to summarize but "Sideshow" is about our attitudes to religion and "the other".
Equally, for all of the 80s hairdos, Blade Runner is about the classic science fiction question of who gets to be human. And so I'd argue it hasn't really dated at all.
Agreed! Like much of Philip Dick's fiction actually. And it hasn't aged at all. The writing style maybe, but the themes are still compelling.
But the date shouldn’t be taken so seriously as “this is what the world will look like in 2019.” For stories made last century, any date after the millennium was “the future” in a symbolic way that let you do pretty much anything you wanted.
- By 2000 we'd have flying cars
- By 2000 we'd have entire meals in pills
- By 2000 there would be no cars, we'd travel in pods in tubes
- By 2000 there would be mass starvation because the world can only support 5 billion people
- By 2000 the northern and southern third of the planet would be covered in sheets of ice because of the coming new ice age.
- By 2000 we'd live underground because the mean surface temperature would be 135°F.
- By 2000 we'd be able to take vacations on a space station, the moon, and Mars.
- By 2000 it would be possible to fly to the other side of the world in just a couple of hours.
- By 2000 there would be an undersea transport tunnel between New York and Europe.