February 4, 2008
Back to the Future
John Crowley (Little, Big) has noticed that, in SF movies, the future's been looking more and more like the past:
"Brazil," set 'somewhere in the 20th Century', isn't really the future; like some of the Superman and Batman movies it's set in a some alternative sorta-retro past or alternative present or generalized urban somewhen....I think it's interesting that the rise of these generalized and often hauntingly beautiful cityscapes of dream have nearly supplanted the city-of-the-future of Things to Come or Buck Rogers or a thousand others. Of course what they do is to incorporate OLD cities-of-the-future into their vision. SF futures are becoming visions of the past, including past futures. What does the future look like? A lot like what 1947 thought the future would look like -- or a lot like 1947 tout suite.