Society Marches On: Difference between revisions

 

Related to [[Values Dissonance]], [[Science Marches On]] and [[The Great Politics Mess-Up]]. [[Eternal Prohibition]] and [[Everybody Smokes]] are specific cases.

 

== [[Comic Books]] ==

* ''[[Camelot 3000]]'', written in the 1980s, had a still-segregated South Africa in the eponymous year, far outdoing 2001.

* The character history for the [[Post-Crisis]] Katherine "Kate" Kane, who would become [[Batwoman]], is that of a dedicated student at West Point who was expelled from the academy and forbidden to enter the army because of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. The policy itself, which forbade any confirmed homosexuals from serving in the US Military, was repealed by an act of congress in 2011, barely a year after her origin was given in ''[[Detective Comics]]''. The story was completely accurate at the time it was written, and will have leeway for several more years because it is a flashback that occurred several years in the past, but it can no longer be brought forward to the "present" when [[Comic Book Time|time "progresses"]].

 

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC5sbdvnvQM This video] from 1966, which imagines what life would be like in 1999, manages to predict home computers, email, and what is effectively internet shopping, but assumes that the average woman will be paying for goods with her husband's money.

 

* [[Arthur C. Clarke]]'s ''Space Odyssey'' was pretty hilarious in this regard; alongside with [[The Great Politics Mess-Up|a Soviet Union well into the 2000's]], Apartheid in South Africa continued into the 2030's, when it ended in a revolution that kicked the white ruling class out.

** Apartheid-related predictions were often a bit off in this way, due mostly to outsiders imagining some sort of centuries-long, deep-seated race war. Whereas it was a recent and quickly dated policy which was mostly prolonged because it somehow wound up as part of Cold War politics. As soon as the policy was put up to vote, everyone rejected it.

** ''[[The Puppet Masters (novel)|The Puppet Masters]]'' was published in 1951 and set in 2007. Although the heroine is just as tough and capable as the male lead (sometimes more so), the moment gender roles or romantic relationships come up she turns, hilariously, into June Cleaver.

** Heinlein's short story "All You Zombies" again features a sex-segregated future in which astronauts and space pilots are always male, and the spaceship stewardess/prostitutes in skimpy outfits are all female.

** Pretty much all of Heinlein's juveniles, despite being set in some indeterminate future, read like [[The Fifties]] with better technology. One obvious example is the main character in ''[[Have Space Suit—Will Travel]]''. On the one hand, his life ambition is to become an aerospace engineer. On the other, he's a recent High School graduate who has a summer job as a soda jerk at the local pharmacy.

* In the [[Isaac Asimov]] short story "The Ugly Little Boy," they have a time machine that only works to Neanderthal times, collecting a small child and doing lots of experiments on him. The nurse/mother figure gets quite upset. The lack of any ethics, or any requirement for ethical approval is shocking.

* In Hamilton's [[Sargasso Of Space]], it is evidently assumed that crewing space ships would be a job primarily reserved for Men, much like sailing was when the story was written.

* The book Steampunk Prime has a number of late 19th and early 20th century science fiction stories that contain examples of this. "In the Deep of Time" involves a man who is chronically revived in an advanced future... where woman STILL are expected to be subordinated to men.

* Arguably averted in ''[[Atlas Shrugged]].'' While the time frame the book takes place in is deliberately vague (it seems to [[The Fifties]] with some sci-fi inventions, like Rearden Metal), the main character is a powerful career woman who courts and has sex out of wedlock with three different men—and holds this up as a sign of her empowerment, rather than something to be stigmatized by. On the flip side, the two housewives of the story have a decidedly anti-Fifties portrayal. Lillian Rearden is portrayed as a nagging parasite who tries (and initially succeeds) to control her husband with sex and is ultimately much worse off for relying on her husband's wealth than if she had forged her own way. Cherryl Taggart is shown to only be a valuable commodity to one of the antagonists when she stays docile and uninformed—her steady gain of savvy shows her become an empowered figure who her husband agonizes over being unable to control any longer. All three are quite the far cry from the docile housewife common in [[The Fifties]] fiction.

* [[Michael Crichton]]'s 2006 ''[[Next (Crichton novel)|Next]]'' relies on potential [[Loophole Abuse]] of US law that was plugged September 16, 2011. This legal move may have actually been a ''result'' of the book.

 

* ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series]]'' tried to avert this. On one hand, they had minorities and women in Starfleet, which was [[Fair for Its Day|progressive for the '60s]], and [[Everybody Smokes|no one smoking]]. But the women were still wearing miniskirts as military uniforms and, although never explicitly told to [[Stay in the Kitchen]], they were often portrayed as [[Damsel in Distress|Distressed Damsels]]. In short they did their best to avert the trope but couldn't due to [[Executive Meddling]], especially in the pilot (see below).

** In the episode "The Enemy Within", evil!Kirk tries to rape Yeoman Rand. She later recounts the incident for good!Kirk, Spock and McCoy, displaying a very '60s attitude about it ("I don't want to get you into trouble. I wouldn't even have mentioned it.") ''while being in tears''. And this is while she is unaware that there are two Kirks running around!

** And her only line is the Russian for "Pretty", referring to a dress in a store window.

 

* ''Since I Met You'' by DC Talk contains the line "My 200 friends couldn't fill the void in my soul". Listening to this in the 90s, this seemed like a ludicrously huge number; but since the advent of Facebook, "200 friends" is, if anything, lower than average.

** Though considering the large number was probably meant to reference the obvious impossibility of being close to that many people, perhaps it's a rather good (if unknowing) reference to the empty vanity of adding people merely to increase the number appearing on your profile. But in that case 200 friends still seems a bit low.