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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/4450
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/4450
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

If you set any part of your story in a place and time which your readers will recognize, that part will eventually be dated. That's simply fact. Look at _The Invisible Man_ or _The Time Machine_ or _The First Men in the Moon_. Those are all classics of scifi, but the parts set in the "present" feel, clearly, of that time.

The question is whether the _non_-Earth part will seem dated fifty years from now. Your readers can accept that "University students from 1957 Milwaukee find themselves on 2057 Mars" or "University students from 2011 Philadelphia find themselves on 2057 Mars" equally, because the point is what the students do when they're on Mars.

The "dated" part of your setting will primarily be to establish your characters. An English major from 1957 Milwaukee will not be the same person as an English major from 2011 Philadelphia, so those two people wouldn't have the same reaction to 2057 Mars.

I don't think you need to dwell on the "current" setting for chapters on end unless it's a major part of the plot, but I do think you need to present it, just to give the reader a sense of who your characters are, where/when they come from, what lives they have, what their attitudes are, and so on. It will save you a lot of infodump later if we've already seen them in their natural habitat, so to speak.

If it bothers you that much, then you have to remove your characters from any contemporary milieu whatsoever. They would have to start in "2057 Loki City" and end up on "2257 Mars," and then you can make up both ends however it suits you.

Original score: 5