The 21st century reaches drinking age

from Forbidden Planet (1956)

Here we are, in the 21st year of the 21st century. We have been in old-science-fiction-numbered years for as long as newly-minted adults have lived.

The 21st century! when all is either bright and shiny miraculous tech or long-feared dystopia and post-civilization. Can it be both? Surely. Much of what readers are reading these days is post-apocalyptic, stories of life after some manmade or natural-but-caused-by-man disaster that Earth is trying to heal from.

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