We’re 13 years beyond the events of “Escape From New York” and the city has yet to become a maximum-security prison surrounded by a 50-foot wall.

Damn when our speculative fiction is off by a decade or two.

Maybe there’s still time, however. Has anyone seen Times Square lately?

Open space is available.

I’m not trying to be humorous. Tongue-in-cheek, certainly, but not humorous.

John Carpenter did the same thing with 1981’s “Escape From New York,” his follow-up to the masterpiece that was (and is) “Halloween.” Carpenter wrote “Escape From New York” as a response to Watergate, and paranoia over the politics of the day.

He was not making a comedy, despite the over-the-top tone of several of the action scenes.

One could only imagine, especially considering the themes of his “They Live” nine years later, what he would have had in store for us if he was inspired by the novel coronavirus.

Or the Trump administration, for that matter.