Jennifer Howard

Jennifer Howard

Writer, editor, journalist.

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Back to the Future

February 4, 2008

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.

Filed Under: Future Imperfect

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Writer, journalist, editor, gadabout. Book- and nature lover. Washingtonian. LLC. Read more ยป

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