the Future of the Future

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post-apocalyptic society: a preoccupation of adolescents of the eighties, manifested in pop culture all over the place from Kiss's "Lick it Up" video to Mad Max to Riddley Walker and finally made obsolete by Kevin Kostner's one-two punch of "Waterworld"/"The Postman"? What happened to the future of fur-bikini-clad desert-dwelling biker gangs?

Why have sci-fi films moved away from portraying the future as wild west-style anarchy and on to the icy placid controlled worlds?

― fritz, Monday, 17 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

does this thesis work: '80's sci-fi = "what would happen if all of our societal controls were removed?" while '00's sci-fi = "what would happen if all of our societal controls were perfected?"

― fritz, Monday, 17 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

does this work? the old-school post-apocalyptic stories are about humanity being forced to deal with the Harsh Realities of life without technology - the new-school stories are about humanity drifting off into a technology-induced dreamlike oblivian.

― fritz, Monday, 17 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

The Mad Max roving madcap gangs type scenarios are lot to do with imagined post-nuclear-holocaust futures. This was a preoccupation in the 80s (and earlier). Since the collapse of Soviet power, nuclear war is less of a fear so the future is imagined as more of a technological extension of today but homing in on the heartlessness of modern capitalism.

― David, Monday, 17 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

We're not as worried about nuclear war anymore. But maybe with our joyful little 'war on terrorism' that's about to make a comeback.

― Ned Raggett, Monday, 17 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I say to you all - choose your weapon for battle in the post- apocolyse landscape. I call spade.

― Lynskey, Monday, 17 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I call long handled garden shears replacing my left arm.

― Jarl'rmai, Monday, 17 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

radioactive waves has made me elastic-man so i can reach around you and tap you on the shoulder from behind so you're all like "What, who's behind me?". HA! Sucka.

― fritz, Monday, 17 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Also missing are dirty ugly controlled worlds full of smoke and rusted gears.

― Sterling Clover, Monday, 17 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I can't wait for the robots from Terminator to join up with the software from The Matrix. I welcome own new overlords with open arms (because they will be able to guarantee me megabroadband access).

― Dan Perry, Monday, 17 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I recently felt discouraged that society seemed to be de-evolving recently rather than progressing, but then I realised 1------- Judgements about what is progress and what is not is purely my opinion. 2- -------- Society these days is becomeing more garish and desensitised, yet at the same time more tolerant and diverse and over all human rights are becomeing more and more important to governments. there is noticeable filth in entertainment becuase society is steril and people crave trash.

― mike hanle y, Tuesday, 18 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

There's also a kind of slow but inexorable decline rather than total holocust trope at work in dystopian thinking, post Cold war; fears about the future coalesce around the slippery and multiple calculus of risk/'progress' and the insidious accretion of environmental deterioration rather than big bang. I'm not sure that the techno- or control-centred dystopia is any more dominant now than it was in earlier parts of the C20 (when anti-utopian literature was in its prime?).

― Ellie, Tuesday, 18 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

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