Canary in the Coal Mine

"Increasingly, our concepts of past, present and future are being forced to revise themselves," wrote J. G. Ballard in 1995— science fiction, as ever, the canary in the coal mine. The future is ceasing to exist, devoured by the all-voracious present. We have annexed the future into the present, as merely one of those manifold alternatives open to us." 

 James Gleick (2016). Time Travel: A History. Nova Iorque: Pantheon.