Future is what will happen next, therefore it is what does not belong to present time yet. Near future is what is going to happen very shortly, hence its foreseeable nature, like we know we are going to go back home after work tonight... whereas the distant future is a lot less predictable: we cannot imagine what surprises the future holds in store for us.

Even if we cannot guess what will happen for sure, some professions precisely lead to predict future events thanks to a scientific deductive process based on probable consequences of present or past facts. Thus, meteorologists predict how will the weather look like in a few days, environmentalists try to deduce what will result from our way of life in the next hundred or thousand years to come.

Others boast to know the future without having real skills. These ones (stargazer, visionaries, seers, etc.) claim to have prophetic visions or elements that enable them to tell the future to people... just like Nostradamus who predicted the apocalypse for 2000, hence the con man reputation.

Besides these latter, future and the unknown are also very dear themes for authors, scenarists and other artists, who can thus let their imagination goes free. Science fiction or fantastic genres which particularly lend themselves to the subject. Thus, great authors as Jules Verne invented some 'extraordinary voyages”, machines of the future and other fantastic creatures that will, from then on, entertain the following generations. Jules Verne's visionary mind still amazes today, and some even qualify the man as a genius.

Nowadays, many catastrophe movies are based on scenarios evoking possible ends of the world (pandemic, natural disaster like a giant tsunami, return of ice age...) that often look plausible, hence the terror generated.