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.
- 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