So WHY haven’t all these bits and bobs gelled yet?  Will they ever?  The thing about fictional futures is, they are often driven by a single mind, and single individual.  That means they are fueled by the experiences and information gleaned by one mind.  Someone (usually the author) has done their research, talked (or not talked) to experts in the field that they have access to (who may or may not be the same experts that everyone else is talking to).

Like a bathtub full of gin, all of those experiences and information points get mellowed together, they sit and steep and come together over time until you have a final, consumable product (much like bathtub gin, the quality may vary).

So a vision of the future is a *curated* experience.  You are looking at it through a single lens, through the eyes of the writer/artist who put it all together.

Which is why the “real” future won’t match.  Ever.  The people who *create* the future do their own curation.  Sometimes they are informed by futurists, by authors and artists, and the pieces they create reflect that.  As often as not, they are chasing a rabbit and have to see where it goes, so where they end up may not at all be where they planned to go.

So, while we may have all the *pieces* of a dystopic future at our fingertips, they are not going to gel.  It takes an individual to do that, to create a suite or a collection or an experience by bringing all of those bits and bobs together.