Science fiction uses the future to see its present, nostalgia uses the past

Evidence

In my opinion, it is the structure of the two operations which is instructively different: the one mobilizing a vision of the future in order to determine its return to a now historical present; the other mobilizing, but in some new allegorical way, a vision of the past, or of a certain moment of the past. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 627

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the structural contrast between futurological and nostalgia modes of historicity — each looks backward from a different direction.
• XREF: connects to: Postmodern nostalgia-laden films yearn for the present while rendering the actual past inaccessible. — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 158; Fairy tales open onto wishful futures while heroic sagas are dominated by the past; Utopian impulses realize future projections disguised as nostalgia — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 299