Near-Present Science Fiction

[Smellincoffee]

Does anyone else especially enjoy science fiction (books and film) that is set close to our time -- books like Contact, Sphere, and so on? I would even count a film like Her. This kind of SF is my personal favorite because the science at play usually has a recognizable link to our present understanding -- as does the impact of the plot.

Here's what I've come up with so far:

Books:
Contact, Sagan
Sphere (okay, pretty much anything by Crichton)
8.4.
The Accidental Time Machine, Joe Haldeman
The Coming, Joe Haldeman
The Martian, Weir
2001: A Space Odyssey, Clarke

Movies:
Her
Gravity
Interstellar
The Bicentennial Man (based off of Asimov short story)

 

[Tosk]

Alien Nation and Quantum Leap.


And I assume we can discount stuff that wasn't set in the near future but is now? Blade Runner is only three years away.

 

[Kai "the spy"]

The Fly (either version)
The vast majority of Alien Invasion stories
The vast majority of Superhero stories (although most of DC and Marvel, as well as stuff like "Watchmen" could be better described as alternate timeline than near future)
Back to the Future I-III
RoboCop
Inception

 

[Greg Cox]

Soylent Green.

 

[Triskelion]

Strange Days
Lawnmower Man
Wild Palms (TV Series)
Max Headroom
Freejack

Set "Today or Tomorrow":
Repo Man (1984)
Mars Attacks
Sneakers (sort of)
The Day the Earth Stood Still (either version)
War of the Worlds (either version)
I Am Legend
Highlander
The Day After
The Walking Dead
Buckaroo Bonzai

 

[Greg Cox]

Real Steel.
Gattaca.

 

[Sto-Vo-Kory]

TV series

Person of Interest
The X-Files

 

[Kai "the spy"]

The Terminator franchise
Fringe
Moonraker (and virtually all spy-fi with SF elements in them)
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Ghost in the Shell
Men in Black
Stargate franchise

 

[JoeZhang]

Sabrina

 

[Tim Walker]

The Jurassic Park movies.

 

[Greg Cox]

Books: The "Greg Mandel" trilogy by Peter Hamilton, which are basically hard-boiled cyberpunk thrillers set in near-future England transformed by global warming. The first book is titled MINDSTAR RISING.

(Full disclosure: I was the American editor on the books when they were first published in the USA, although that was a long, long time ago.)