Inspiration for 2020

Because larps go much easier if you write them a year in advance, here’s some historical inspiration from Wikipedia for next year. If you like to live dangerously and write for the year ahead, 2019’s list is here.

Just out of copyright (in NZ)

  • Day of the Triffids (and everything by John Wyndham)

Set in 2020

  • Cyberpunk 2020
  • Terrahawks
  • Pacific Rim

1995

  • Film: Toy Story, Braveheart, 12 Monkeys, The Usual Suspects
  • TV: Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Xena: Warrior Princess, Star Trek: Voyager, American Gothic, Pride & Prejudice (Colin Firth version), Father Ted. Rainbow ends.
  • Games: Heroes of Might and Magic
  • Books: The Golden Compass, The Diamond Age

1970

  • The first Earth Day
  • Apollo 13
  • Kent State massacre
  • Work starts on the Kola Superdeep Borehole
  • Film: Airport, MAS*H
  • TV: UFO, The Goodies
  • Books: Ringworld, Fantastic Mr Fox

1945

  • End of WWII. V-E day, Trinity, Hiroshima and all that
  • Books: The Three Railway Engines (the first Thomas the Tank Engine book!), Animal Farm, Brideshead Revisited, The Moomins and the Great Flood

1920

  • USA: The red scare, prohibition, and women’s suffrage
  • Film: The Mark of Zorro, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
  • Books: The Mysterious Affair at Styles, R.U.R: Rossum’s Universal Robots, Black Mask magazine
  • Births: Isaac Asimov?, Frank Herbert, Ray Bradbury, Richard Adams, P. D. James, Christopher Robin Milne

1895

  • Arrhenius presents “On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air Upon The Temperature of the Ground”
  • murder of Bridget Cleary (there’s a dark fairy tale in that, surely)
  • Books: The Time Machine, The King in Yellow
  • Births: Ngaio Marsh, Robert Graves

1870

  • The Paris Commune
  • Unification of Italy
  • First performance of Die Walküre
  • Books: 20,000 Lagues Under the Sea, Around the Moon
  • Deaths: Charles Dickens, Alexandre Dumas

1845

  • The Franklin Expedition sets sail and is last seen.
  • Start of the Irish potato famine
  • NZ: The flagstaff war and burning of Kororareka
  • Literature: The Raven, The Count of Monte Cristo

1820

  • British Regency ends
  • Cato Street Conspiracy
  • Births: Anne Bronte
  • Deaths: Joseph Banks

1770

  • Cook circumnavigates NZ
  • Births: William Wordsworth
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