Stories set in the near future: writing about 2030-2040 without cliches

[SpinState]

Near future fiction is harder than far future in some ways because the plausibility requirements are higher. Far future you can invent anything. Near future you have to extrapolate from what is actually happening right now, and the cliches are everywhere: the dystopian surveillance state, the AI that goes wrong, the climate disaster that is always just arriving but never arrived.

I am trying to write something set about eight years from now and I keep running into these patterns. Not because I cannot avoid them mechanically but because the interesting near-future territory feels harder to locate when you are surrounded by noise about what the future will contain.

How do others approach writing near future? What makes it feel earned rather than borrowed?

[Chris27]

The most useful advice I got on near future fiction: write about what stays the same, not what changes. People will still be dealing with family dynamics, loneliness, ambition, the specific exhaustion of Tuesday afternoons. Use the changed world as a backdrop for unchanged human material.