# Fiction in which future societies interpret modern culture **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 11, 2011, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955 "2011-09-11T17:32:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955/1 "2011-09-11T17:32:00Z")
I’m looking for works of fiction that feature future societies interpreting artifacts of modern culture, often in humorously misguided ways. A few examples would be _A Canticle for Leibowitz_, in which technical materials are interpreted as holy writings. _Motel of the Mysteries_, in which a modern American motel is uncovered years in the future and explained the way we explain Egyptian tombs. [Beatles 3000](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z2vU8M6CYI), a silly “documentary” from the future about the influences of the Beatles. The beginning of the movie _Sleeper_. ---
**Author:** ![Lasciel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e79b87/32.png) [@Lasciel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lasciel)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955/2 "2011-09-11T17:51:46Z")
The Obernewtyn (over new town) Chronicles by Isobelle Carmody has that same idea. “Modern” stuff is considered to be super evil dark magics. It sortof is, actually, but there are lots of examples of technology being misinterpreted. I think that Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban is similar in that regard - much like Leibowitz. Good luck reading it tho - it makes Clockwork Orange look like the king’s english. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955/3 "2011-09-11T18:03:43Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > _Motel of the Mysteries_, in which a modern American motel is uncovered years in the future and explained the way we explain Egyptian tombs. That’s going back a ways. Nice to know there’s someone else who appreciates early David Macauley. Many years ago, KING TV did a show called _Pompeii on Elliott Bay_, in which a future archaeologist was interpreting sites that were unearthed from present-day Seattle. (The city had been buried in ash when “Queen Anne Mound” turned out to be a volcano and erupted.) The only monument of any appreciable grandeur was actually the freeway. A golf course was a simulation of the hardships of war. And the amusement rides at Seattle Center were for punishing misbehaving children. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955/4 "2011-09-11T18:11:44Z")
History Lesson by Arthur C. Clarke. A spacefaring race comes across a dead, frozen Earth and discovers several artifacts, most notably a cartoon (Disney?) movie reel. They conclude that life on Earth was about car chases and violence. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955/5 "2011-09-11T18:14:01Z")
In Gene Wolfe’s classic \*New Sun \*books, the hero occasionally reads from an very, very old book about tales of the ancient days; seeing as the story is set on the Earth of some 50 million years in the future, they’re actually deeply distorted mixes of myth and history. For instance, the first story is an insane mashup of the myth of Theseus with the Battle of Hampton Roads, based, apparently, on the similarity between two unrelated words. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955/6 "2011-09-11T18:18:42Z")
Orphans of the Sky by Robert Heinlein, in which a child in a primitive human society that lives in ignorance aboard a generational starship questions his teachers about the ancient writings about the Law of Gravity in a very old Physics book on on the ship, and he is told that the people of old were “hopeless romantics” and that the law of gravity is just their way of saying that if you put too people together, they fall in love, and if you separate them, they get over it. They also treat the story of the ship’s original mission and an “incident” that occurred that threw the ship into chaos in a religious context, and they even refer to life as “the trip” and refer to death as “making the trip to Far Centaurus”. ---
**Author:** ![SirRay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cc9497/32.png) [@SirRay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SirRay)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955/7 "2011-09-11T18:29:58Z")
The short story “The Lost Civilization of Deli” by Jean Shepherd (yes, the “A Christmas Story” Jean Shepherd) from his book “A Fistful of Fig Newtons” A future archaeological expedition uncovers films of old TV commericals from then contemporary 1970s era (e.g. “At McDonalds we do it all for you” “Purina Cat Chow, Chow, Chow Chow”, “Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie and Chevorlet” and so on) and of course totally misinterprets their meaning. Google Books to the Rescue, [at least for the start of the story](http://books.google.com/books?id=i_qC2i1ykjsC&pg=PA159&lpg=PA159&dq=jean+shepherd+lost+civilizations&source=bl&ots=bqSDzyBc_n&sig=t9uVMr_YgVJH_H_4GRzZEKxwIHQ&hl=en&ei=jPxsTvKFJ83dgQfN34X5AQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&sqi=2&ved=0CBkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false) ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_A.Robrin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sam_a.robrin/32/14497_2.png) [@Sam\_A.Robrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_A.Robrin)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955/8 "2011-09-11T19:24:06Z")
Slightly triangulated from your intent, Kurt Vonnegut’s _Breakfast of Champions_ is written in the style of someone explaining American culture to a Martian. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955/9 "2011-09-11T19:33:27Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > _Motel of the Mysteries_, in which a modern American motel is uncovered years in the future and explained the way we explain Egyptian tombs. For those unfamiliar, [MotM](http://www.amazon.com/Motel-Mysteries-David-Macaulay/dp/0395284252) was done by engineering illustrator [David McCaulay](http://www.davidmacaulay.com/), famous for doing such books as _How Stuff Works_, _Pyramid_, _Castle_ and _Cathedral_. I loved his reconstruction of a 1970s [priestess headdress](http://people.virginia.edu/~sfr/enlt214m/mystmotel.jpg). ---
**Author:** ![BleizDu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@BleizDu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BleizDu)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955/10 "2011-09-11T19:42:33Z")
> **[Courtship Rite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtship_Rite)** > > Courtship Rite is a science fiction novel by Canadian writer Donald Kingsbury, originally serialized in Analog magazine in 1982. The book is set in the same universe as some of Kingsbury's other stories, such as "Shipwright" (1978) and the unpublished The Finger Pointing Solward. > In the UK, the novel was entitled Geta, and in France, Parade nuptiale. > Courtship Rite was the first winner of the Compton Crook Award for best first novel, was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1983 and w... This SF novel by Donald Kingsbury is partly about that theme. The current inhabitants of that planet colonized by humans a long time ago discover a data storage crystal from that time, are able to extract some info from it, and become really puzzled by some things. (ex: “what? they were killing each others in huge numbers? why on earth?? you couldn’t eat so many people!”) People on this planet are cannibals due to lack of animals. ---
**Author:** ![OttoDaFe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ottodafe/32/356_2.png) [@OttoDaFe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OttoDaFe)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955/11 "2011-09-11T19:43:38Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > That’s going back a ways. Nice to know there’s someone else who appreciates early David Macauley. > > Many years ago, KING TV did a show called _Pompeii on Elliott Bay_, in which a future archaeologist was interpreting sites that were unearthed from present-day Seattle. (The city had been buried in ash when “Queen Anne Mound” turned out to be a volcano and erupted.) The only monument of any appreciable grandeur was actually the freeway. A golf course was a simulation of the hardships of war. And the amusement rides at Seattle Center were for punishing misbehaving children. The segment that sticks in my mind from that show was the archaeologist trying to determine what function office buildings served. His conclusion: since vast quantities of paper were delivered each morning, and vast quantities of paper balls were removed each evening, they were paper ball factories. He then went on to speculate how the society used these paper balls, and described how one would rise in the hierarchy by creative and more efficient paper ball crafting. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955/12 "2011-09-11T19:45:15Z")
“I shall be taking you to Old London town in the country of UK, ruled over by Good King Wenceslas. Now human beings worship the great god Santa, a creature with fearsome claws and his wife Mary. And every Christmas Eve, the people of UK go to war with the country of Turkey. They then eat the Turkey people for Christmas dinner, like savages!” ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955/13 "2011-09-11T19:52:26Z")
> [@OttoDaFe](#): > > The segment that sticks in my mind from that show was the archaeologist trying to determine what function office buildings served. His conclusion: since vast quantities of paper were delivered each morning, and vast quantities of paper balls were removed each evening, they were paper ball factories. He then went on to speculate how the society used these paper balls, and described how one would rise in the hierarchy by creative and more efficient paper ball crafting. Somebody else knows _Pompeii on Elliott Bay_? I thought I was one of two people in the world who’d even remember it. How obscure is it? I just googled it, and the fifth result is _this thread_. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Scud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f08c70/32.png) [@Tom\_Scud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Scud)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955/14 "2011-09-11T19:52:43Z")
[QUOTE=the flowered thundermug, by Alfred Bester] “We will conclude this first semester of Antiquities 107,” Professor Paul Muni said, "with a reconstruction of an average day in the life of a mid-twentieth-century inhabitant of the United States of America, as Great L.A. was known five hundred years ago. "Let us refer to him as Jukes, one of the proudest names of the times, immortalized in the Kallikak-Jukes-feud sagas. It is now generally agreed that the mysterious code letters JU, found in the directories of Hollywood East, or New York City as it was called then–viz., JU 6-0600 or JU 2-1914–indicate in some manner a genealogical relationship to the powerful Jukes dynasty. “The year is 1950. Mr. Jukes, a typical `loner'--i.e., `bachelor’–lives on a small ranch outside New York. He rises at dawn, dresses in spurred boots, Daks slacks, rawhide shirt, gray flannel waistcoat and black knit tie. He arms himself with a Police Positive revolver or a Frontier Six Shooter and goes out to the Bar-B-Q to prepare his breakfast of curried plankton or converted algae. He may or may not surprise juvenile delinquents or red Indians on his ranch in the act of lynching a victim or rustling his automobiles, of which he has a herd of perhaps one hundred and fifty.” [/quote] That’s the first 3 paragraphs. It goes on in that vein, before developing a plot which involves a refugee from our (well, Bester’s) time living in this future society. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955/15 "2011-09-11T20:23:33Z")
**Sleeper** , by Woody Allen, of course. The re-interpretation (aided by Allen’s character, who is lying through his teeth, is hilarious) Plenty of books and stories feature future folk puzzling over the remains of 20th century civilization, almost as a throwaway, Stephen Vincent Benet’s _By the Waters of Babylon_ and Poul Anderson’s _Vault of the Ages_, for instance. Heinlein’s done it in other cases, too, besides the one listed above, as in **Space Cadet** , where they argue about who Kilroy was. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955/16 "2011-09-11T20:56:33Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > **Sleeper** , by Woody Allen, of course. The re-interpretation (aided by Allen’s character, who is lying through his teeth, is hilarious) Much of his reawakening scene was cut and pasted for the first Austin Powers. ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955/17 "2011-09-11T21:09:52Z")
[By the Waters of Babylon](http://www.tkinter.smig.net/Outings/RosemountGhosts/Babylon.htm) by Stephen Vincent Benet. ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955/18 "2011-09-11T21:36:26Z")
> [@Fretful\_Porpentine](#): > > [By the Waters of Babylon](http://www.tkinter.smig.net/Outings/RosemountGhosts/Babylon.htm) by Stephen Vincent Benet. Ha! I remembered a short story we read in High School that fit this thread but I couldn’t remember enough details to figure out the title but this was it! ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955/19 "2011-09-11T21:53:18Z")
Walter Jon Williams’ (very funny) Drake Maijstral series is set in a human civilization that was conquered for a time by aliens who rewrote human history to fit their somewhat weird ideas of what it was _supposed_ to be like. So you have “Westerns” with Albert Einstein and Nikolai Tesla as gunfighters at the OK Corral, Elvis as the Messiah; that sort of thing. From the end of one episode of an old cartoon named (I think) _Zeta_ or something like that: > [@](#): > > “And this was called a “safety pin”, used to pin diapers to babies.” > > “AHH! They _pinned_ diapers to babies?!” > > “It was a barbaric time.” ---
**Author:** ![OttoDaFe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ottodafe/32/356_2.png) [@OttoDaFe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OttoDaFe)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955/20 "2011-09-11T23:38:51Z")
Arthur C Clarke’s [History Lesson](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_Lesson_%28short_story%29). [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955.md?page=2)