Seinfeld Is Unfunny/Literature: Difference between revisions

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* The ''[[Snow Crash]]'' physical manifestation of the internet can come off as either a brilliant, eerie prediction of the future or a "I know this already" unsurprising setting depending on whether you read it before or after ''[[Second Life]]'' proved ''everything.''
* "[[A Sound of Thunder]]", a short story by [[Ray Bradbury]], was about time travelers who went back to prehistoric times, killed a butterfly, and accidently caused a fascist candidate to win the presidential elections. Which was a really original plot, when it was written. However, those story elements are so trite now that when the movie loosely based on the story was made, it was criticized for using old, tired cliches.
* [[Stephen King]]'s books have fallen into this due to so many modern horror writers copying his style. When he first published ''[['Salem's Lot]]'' and ''[[Carrie]]'', the idea of bringing horror out of gothic castles and into average New England towns revitalized the genre.
* ''[[Stranger in A Strange Land]]'' by [[Robert A. Heinlein]] features a Jesus-like human from Mars who can perform telekinesis, telepathy, and miracle healing simply by meditating. He spends most of the novel trying to "understand earth behaviour" and ends up bringing his followers sexual liberation. Most people nowadays tend to forget that Heinlein wrote the novel in the ''fifties'' but that it was published in the sixties, It was deemed publishable only when the hippie movement was already well on its way and ended up as a huge influence on the mentality of the '60s and '70s (predating Jonathan Livingstone Seagull by over a decade). Many attitudes in modern New Age philosophy are taken directly from Heinlein's work, often disguised as ancient Eastern wisdom.
** A lot of Heinlein's works have ended up as this simply due to the sheer amount of influence he had on science fiction at the time. ''[[Starship Troopers]]'' and ''[[The Puppet Masters]]'' are two especially good examples.
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* The ''[[Shannara]]'' franchise, particularly ''[[The Sword of Shannara]]''. People today tend to look at it and see a blatant rip-off of ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]''. At the time, people wouldn't have, due to Brooks' other innovations, including Elves that were human and fallible, a [[Mentor]] who was a whopping example of [[Good Is Not Nice]], the aversion of [[Always ChaoticExclusively Evil]], and of course, the twist ending ({{spoiler|The Sword convinces [[The Big Bad]] of his [[Dead All Along]] status}}), and the [[After the End]] setting. Nowadays all those things are so common that modern readers tend only to notice the flaws and the similarities to ''Lord of the Rings'', instead of the differences.
** Tolkien's Elves were fallible, plenty of his characters (including mentor types like Gandalf and especially Thorin) exhibit [[Good Is Not Nice]], he subverted and deconstructed [[Always ChaoticExclusively Evil]], and LOTR has two twist endings. There might be bits buried in the Shannara books not ripped off from Tolkien, but those aren't among them. The [[After the End]] setting cropped up years later due to [[Canon Welding]] rather than any particular piece of creative insight.
* ''[[Annie on My Mind]]''. The villains are one-dimensional, the romance develops in a short time (a month or so), and the heroes, [[Woobie|Woobies]] or not, make some stupid decisions. These tend to turn people off the to the book. They forget that this was ''the'' first book to portray lesbians in a positive light, without having them [[Cure Your Gays|turn straight]] or [[Bury Your Gays|die]].
* Science fiction in general. Technologies that used to be completely fantastic tend to become [[Truth in Television]] decades later. See also [[Technology Marches On]].