Post by MinnesotaNationalist on Jun 24, 2016 0:50:26 GMT
(same stick) Popular culture isn't something that seems to be brought up much in Future History (for fair enough reasons, it's freaking impossible to predict. Like the weather, you can get a good estimate about a week ahead, and afterwards its all guesswork). What it tends to be, from my experience, is that it seems like pop culture just freezes and stays the same forever. This of course is hardly the case.
Literature in particular has been increasingly hard to guess. Ever since Film and Television became popular, Literature seems to have become more and more just a crowd-funded plot to a movie (ie. only good for being turned into movies). There are of course exceptions, you have your Steven Kings, your John Greens, your J K Rowlings and such, but popular Literature in general seems to much more random and sporadic in modern times than in any other time. I mean, let's look at the most popular books from 2000 to present (as in, the ones you hear the most about). Through 2000-2005, we had the Harry Potter Books, a fantasy book, absolutely storming the market. Then, in 2005-2008, you have the Twilight books, fantasy/romance/abusive smut (seriously, just don't). After Twilight, Hunger Games, an adventure/rebellion story, and in 2012 the most popular was The Fault in Our Stars, a teen-oriented book about fighting cancer. And then 2013, 2014, and 2015 don't seem to have anything to shown for them, even Dan Brown and Steven King have seemed to fallen off the face of the earth. These stories seem to have nothing related at all, so who knows what literature has for us in the future. Any thoughts?
I also bring up Comic Books, since I feel like that may be the most popular form of literature right now, and probably the most easy to predict. Comic Books almost always reflect our political atmosphere, such as the Captain America Civil War comic coming in 2005 as a response to growing surveillance threats and the thought of restricting a minority in the name of security. Captain America himself was born in the Second World War as an American propaganda piece (ya don't say?), Iron Man was a captain of industry and technology to combat the Soviets, and the Hulk is a symbol of, uh, uh... Smashing American enemies to dust? Apparently something about the fear of Nuclear annihilation, I don't know. So an a general future history of political changes would probably be reflected on Comic books as well. To take an example from Matheun's Earth 2150 scenario (althistoria.proboards.com/thread/493/earth-2150-worldbuilding), a Dynamist hero (or more likely villain, fighting against 'Murica) would likely closely correspond with the national personification (a role that Captain America, oddly, fits into well, as well as Superman).
Literature in particular has been increasingly hard to guess. Ever since Film and Television became popular, Literature seems to have become more and more just a crowd-funded plot to a movie (ie. only good for being turned into movies). There are of course exceptions, you have your Steven Kings, your John Greens, your J K Rowlings and such, but popular Literature in general seems to much more random and sporadic in modern times than in any other time. I mean, let's look at the most popular books from 2000 to present (as in, the ones you hear the most about). Through 2000-2005, we had the Harry Potter Books, a fantasy book, absolutely storming the market. Then, in 2005-2008, you have the Twilight books, fantasy/romance/abusive smut (seriously, just don't). After Twilight, Hunger Games, an adventure/rebellion story, and in 2012 the most popular was The Fault in Our Stars, a teen-oriented book about fighting cancer. And then 2013, 2014, and 2015 don't seem to have anything to shown for them, even Dan Brown and Steven King have seemed to fallen off the face of the earth. These stories seem to have nothing related at all, so who knows what literature has for us in the future. Any thoughts?
I also bring up Comic Books, since I feel like that may be the most popular form of literature right now, and probably the most easy to predict. Comic Books almost always reflect our political atmosphere, such as the Captain America Civil War comic coming in 2005 as a response to growing surveillance threats and the thought of restricting a minority in the name of security. Captain America himself was born in the Second World War as an American propaganda piece (ya don't say?), Iron Man was a captain of industry and technology to combat the Soviets, and the Hulk is a symbol of, uh, uh... Smashing American enemies to dust? Apparently something about the fear of Nuclear annihilation, I don't know. So an a general future history of political changes would probably be reflected on Comic books as well. To take an example from Matheun's Earth 2150 scenario (althistoria.proboards.com/thread/493/earth-2150-worldbuilding), a Dynamist hero (or more likely villain, fighting against 'Murica) would likely closely correspond with the national personification (a role that Captain America, oddly, fits into well, as well as Superman).