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Since you have the ability to set your story any time you want, if it’s set on earth, in a near future scenario, the year it’s set is at least a tacit prediction that that is the point in which you think certain advances are likely. Otherwise you’d just set it in 2050.

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This doesn't seem accurate - the scenario needs to be imaginable, but that doesn't mean it's a prediction by the author. I could write a story about the downstream effects of discovering FTL travel in 2030, but that doesn't mean I think it's going to happen. Even for something more realistic - something that will probably happen on some timeline, just not right away, like a Mars colony - the author might not want to explore or think about other technological or societal changes that happen in a longer period of time? Fiction is just that, fiction

I’m going to use VR worlds as a major plot point, and I vaguely intuit that will be likely around the year 2035, why would I set my story in 2100?

That would require me to deliberately adjust my timeline to make “predictions” less likely.

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