CS: Near-future Scenarios

Near-future (15-30-80 years)
The near-future version is a perpetual 20 years away. Certain technical solutions will have developed, but those are rolled into society so quickly that they're taken for granted. What will define the scenarios in this range will be what old and familar problems are magnified and what new problems are blossoming.

Near-future SF may still contain a great deal of contemporary technology, like gunpowder-based weapons, but will have feature inventions or discoveries that spearhead a difference in psychology, sociology or operational tactics, techniques or procedures.
 * Low-level AI is becoming pervasive, both a blessing and a curse as unemployment forces government to revise economic structures. AI/Robotics has its own rules, and that may include autonomous weapons systems.
 * Even if fusion exists, only portions of the planet have access to it. There is still a great deal of world reliance on oil and ecological catastrophe is crashing through the earth in slow motion. Even as islands of sanity fight back with responsible practice, they suffer the ills their history and their neighbors still inflict.
 * Expect EMG/EHD (electrostatic) propulsion to begin replacing propeller and jet-driven thrust. There will be a rise and fall in several transitional fuels, from bio-fuels to algae-derived hydrogen to eventual direct-electric super-capacitor battery cells. Near the 50-year mark, gravitics will be a major tech revolution that will likely be both a boon and a strategic imbalance.
 * Space exploration will begin to grow again, reaching the moon with permanent (if small) human presence and the 50-year mark sees the first humans land on Mars.

Looking for Inspiration
Source material for technology in this range, especially with possible social consequences, comes from a thousand wonderful sources.
 * Philip K Dick: a range of inspiration, featuring the likes of "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (and the Blade Runner/2049 theatrical interpretations).
 * William Gibson: while many class him as "speculative" (and it could fit), he defined the "cyberpunk" movement. That kind of technical hardware-neurological integration straddles the line of speculative and near-future – though if compared against the original publish dates, it would squarely be near-future. Says a lot about how far we've come since "Neuromancer " first came out.
 * Arthur C. Clarke: This is on the far end of Near-Future, and we're looking specifically at the human side of his space-travel technology predictions from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Regrettably, 2001 came and left and we were nowhere near that yet.