Coffee lamps, electric trucks, the Titanic, gigantic starship-like airships - what a time to be alive...!
The future was then.
The future was then.
The future is now.
I don’t vomit when i forget to charge my phone.
Shelley's Frankenstein's Monster, Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues, Wells's Time Machine, Kubrick and Clarke's 2001, Star Wars, Battlestar Gallactica (both the original and the remake).
It's the principle function of the genre.