I’m currently battling the flu, so pardon the brief thoughts for this week’s blog.
Science fiction, by its nature, is generally forward-thinking. There’s no way to really get around that — have you ever read or watched a sci-fi story unfold within the context of the past, or that functions within a totally retro style? There’s even a specific word (retrofuture) that seeks to describe the appropriation of past stylistic elements within the sci-fi context, that specifically clarifies this past appropriation within, you guessed it, the future.
But of course, this is a very general description of something that, to be completely fair, I haven’t studied that much in depth. Perhaps there are depictions of sci-fi in which the physical world-building elements are directly lifted and then invisibly updated so that on the surface, everything remains the same, but it’s the intrinsic being of the world that’s moved in the future. Like, imagine a 1950s aesthetic fueled by wicked technology — not steampunk, which relies on an alt!history view of tech, but actual progress.
Anyway, those are just thoughts, but if anyone could pass on the name or names of works of fiction that hit on what I’m describing, I’d love to check it out. Or, on the other hand, if someone knows about a work of medieval fantasy that is supposedly set in the future (perhaps post-apocalyptic?), that would be interesting to look at to, to switch genre time dimension frames. And on that note, good night.
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