This Apple TV+ series is set in a “retro-futurist” world – perhaps a late-40s/early-50s view of a near future that includes hovercars, robots, videophones, and space tourism that’s within reach of the middle class. And one with levels of diversity that (as far as I can see from outside the US) took several more decades to achieve.
Visually, it’s a great creation of a world that didn’t happen. But the basic story – as far as it has unfolded in the first four episodes – could have been set in pretty much any environment.
I’m enjoying it, but please don’t think of it as science fiction or science fantasy. Even though the background is broadly familiar from pulp SF, it is exactly that: background.
It’s not “what if you could buy a timeshare on the moon?” So far, it’s “what if a man leaves his family in pursuit of a (questionable) career, and decades later has an opportunity to reconnect with his adult son?”
For me, the big question at this stage is not “will father and son reconcile?” but “is the business real, or is it just a scam?”
