- Joined
- Jun 18, 2019
The funny thing about the science fiction genre is sci fi stories are really just metaphors for the times in which they were made, rather than ever being accurate depictions of the future.
Think the gleaming art deco metropolises of mid 20th century sci fi, reflecting the optimism of the post WW2 era or the gritty cyberhells of 1980s era cyberpunk, which is currently undergoing a nostalgic revival, reflecting the rise of crime and drugs of the decade.
But what's funny is I think there's a recent example that can already fall into this category and that's Ready Player One.
When I read the original novel in 2011 I thought it was a very interesting depiction of the future, in fact I had a feeling that the future would be exactly like that, but when I saw the movie last year the whole thing seemed so dated and irrelevant, depicting a nerd culture that isn't turned against itself and just heck, a future world that isn't a race war or something.
What Ready Player One was really about was a sci fi metaphor for life in the 2000s, people using nostalgia, nerd culture and newfound technology to escape the post 9/11, Iraq war era, which is really interesting when looked at from that perspective, but now 8 years on is pretty obviously a product of a much different time.
On the flipside, the novel did predict the revival of VR technology, so from a technologically standpoint it actually was eerily prescient, but from a cultural standpoint it's very much frozen in 2011.
Think the gleaming art deco metropolises of mid 20th century sci fi, reflecting the optimism of the post WW2 era or the gritty cyberhells of 1980s era cyberpunk, which is currently undergoing a nostalgic revival, reflecting the rise of crime and drugs of the decade.
But what's funny is I think there's a recent example that can already fall into this category and that's Ready Player One.
When I read the original novel in 2011 I thought it was a very interesting depiction of the future, in fact I had a feeling that the future would be exactly like that, but when I saw the movie last year the whole thing seemed so dated and irrelevant, depicting a nerd culture that isn't turned against itself and just heck, a future world that isn't a race war or something.
What Ready Player One was really about was a sci fi metaphor for life in the 2000s, people using nostalgia, nerd culture and newfound technology to escape the post 9/11, Iraq war era, which is really interesting when looked at from that perspective, but now 8 years on is pretty obviously a product of a much different time.
On the flipside, the novel did predict the revival of VR technology, so from a technologically standpoint it actually was eerily prescient, but from a cultural standpoint it's very much frozen in 2011.
