Year 2018!

So the years is now 2018 and Young Sheldon happens almost thirty years earlier.

I would like to see some sort of joke about how much better the year 2018 was in science fiction than in real life.

Sheldon and Tam could be watching a rerun of the "Space Seed" episode of Star Trek, for example, and one might comment that the Eugenics Wars could happen in just a few years. And the other could ask why the writers chose such an early date for such a scary future event. And then the first would say that had to choose a date that was earlier than 2018, when space travel becomes much faster in Star Trek.

And then the second could ask why did they have to make faster space travel happen as early as 2018 instead of 2068 or 2118, enabling the Eugenics Wars to happen at a safely distant future date? And the first could say that was because James Blish was hired to write the written adapatations for the episodes, and so the year 2018 as chosen as the year that space travel became much faster as a homage to Blish.

And when the second was still confused, the first could be surprised that he never read Blish's great series Cities in Flight, which includes the novel called They Shall Have Stars, or Year 2018!, in which immortality drugs are discovered and a faster than light star drive is invented in the year 2018.

And Sheldon and Tam could talk about how great it would be if a faster than light drive was invented in 2018, or preferably earlier, so that they could travel to the stars like in Star Trek, and how good it would be if immortality drugs were invented in 2018, even though they would already be very old, about forty, in 2018.

And perhaps they would say they were certain that immortality drugs would be invented by 2018, since the alternative would be too depressing to contemplate.