# 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:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**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, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955/21 "2011-09-11T23:41:54Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > 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_. Actually, I think its proper title was _Pompeii on Elliott Beii_ — but that doesn’t return much either. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2011, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955/22 "2011-09-12T02:09:25Z")
Idiocracy: World War II as interpreted by future idiots: [Time Masheen - YouTube](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3dhSnEtdWw) ---
**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 12, 2011, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955/23 "2011-09-12T02:26:25Z")
> [@OttoDaFe](#): > > Actually, I think its proper title was _Pompeii on Elliott Beii_ — but that doesn’t return much either. I’m pretty sure you’re right about the spelling, but googling that returns only one relevant hit; this thread. How long does it take for a new post here to get into the Google database, anyway? It’s like they’re spying on us. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2011, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955/24 "2011-09-12T18:00:20Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > That’s going back a ways. Nice to know there’s someone else who appreciates early David Macauley. I have this book! What really amuses me are the parts based on actual archeological digs. Like when the guy looks into the motel room and when asked what he sees he says “Wonderful things!” Or the picture of his partner, a woman, wearing the “sacred relics” It’s a parody of a photograph of the wife of Heinrich Schliemann, who dug out the city he believed to be Troy. She wore some jewelry found at the site and posed for the picture. You can find it online. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2011, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955/25 "2011-09-12T18:06:31Z")
I don’t remember which story this was in, but there was one about alien archaeologists trying to figure out what Earth was all about based on artifacts from the 20th century. What I remember is that the aliens believed there to be two related races extant on earth, the smokers and the non-smokers. The smokers had wings and were technologically advanced, having a floating golden circular device accompanying them over their heads at all time. The smokers were the dominant species but there were strict caste-like rules about where they (and the non-smokers) were allowed to be. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2011, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955/26 "2011-09-12T18:17:24Z")
The BUCK ROGERS television series of course had our hero go around correcting people who kept getting the 20th Century all wrong; mistaking a lampshade for a salad bowl, say, and thinking ping-pong tables doubled as pool tables. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2011, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955/27 "2011-09-12T22:31:53Z")
By Stanislaw Lem. The opening is (non spoiler) an account of a future archeologist. A germ brought back from space has destroyed almost all paper. So, records of the pre disaster civilization are sketchy at best. The archeologists wonder about the significance of certain special pieces of paper called Kapital and the lengths people would go to in order to get them. They are confused by the religious meaning of “Show me your papyrs.” They are aware of a war between the People Of Kapital and another great nation. One archeologist, Wid Wiss by name, is laughed at when he claims the Priests Of Kapital built a secret second Pentagon- until the building is unearthed and the titular artifact found. A great book, the back cover says “A world where everybody is a spy but nobody knows his mission”. I’ve read it many times and could happily read it many more. ---
**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 12, 2011, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955/28 "2011-09-12T23:50:50Z")
In the Star Trek book _Debtor’s Planet_, the character Offenhouse (the present-day rich guy from one TV episode, who was cryogenically frozen and revised in Picard’s time) at one point is talking with Picard in Picard’s detective holodeck fantasy. He amuses himself by deliberately giving Picard bad advice on how to make early 20th century stuff more “authentic”, like “The secretary should have pink hair”. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955/29 "2011-09-13T01:26:41Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Plenty of books and stories feature future folk puzzling over the remains of 20th century civilization, almost as a throwaway My favorite such bit that I’ve run across recently, though it involves an artifact that does not (yet?) exist, is the “ **Oz Memorial** ” from Jasper Fforde’s _Shades of Grey_. [QUOTE=Jasper Fforde] It was a partial bronze of a group of oddly shaped animals, the whole about six feet high and four feet across. According to the museum guide, it had been cut into pieces and dumped in the river three centuries before as part of the deFacting, so only two figures remained of a possible five. The best preserved was that of a pig in a dress and a wig, and next to her stood a bulbous- bodied bear in a necktie. Of the third and fourth figures there remained almost nothing, and of the fifth, only two claw- shaped feet truncated at the ankles, modeled on no creature living today. “The eyes are very large and humanlike for a pig,” said my father, peering closer. “And I’ve seen a number of bears in my life, but none of them wore a hat.” “They were very big on anthropomorphism,” I ventured, which was pretty much accepted fact. The Previous had many other customs that were inexplicable, none more so than their propensity to intermingle fact with fiction, which made it very hard to figure out what had happened and what hadn’t. Although we knew that this bronze had been cast in honor of Oz, the full dedication on the plinth was badly eroded, so it remained tantalizingly unconnected to any of the other Oz references that had trickled down through the centuries. Debating societies had pondered long and hard over the “Oz Question,” and published many scholarly tracts within the pages of Spectrum. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955/30 "2011-09-13T06:41:23Z")
> [@Baker](#): > > I have this book! What really amuses me are the parts based on actual archeological digs. Like when the guy looks into the motel room and when asked what he sees he says “Wonderful things!” > > Or the picture of his partner, a woman, wearing the “sacred relics” It’s a parody of a photograph of the wife of Heinrich Schliemann, who dug out the city he believed to be Troy. She wore some jewelry found at the site and posed for the picture. You can find it online. Ah ha! That confirmed that it was what I was remembering, I would like to report that it was translated to Spanish and lots of the weirdness and fun was left intact. ---
**Author:** ![SecretaryofEvil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e95f7d/32.png) [@SecretaryofEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SecretaryofEvil)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2011, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955/31 "2011-09-14T18:10:46Z")
Has no one mentioned Futurama yet? They make quite a few jokes about how people in the future will misinterpret the past. For instance, according to a book entitled “Dances of the Ancient Bronx,” the Hustle was performed to implore the gods for a gift, usually a Trans-am. In another episode, the main character has to explain to another character that Jackie Gleason wasn’t an early pioneer of space travel, he was just using space travel as a metaphor for beating his wife. ---
**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 15, 2011, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955/32 "2011-09-15T01:31:19Z")
Hmmm this seems close enough to qualify. I remember a novel where the protagonist had inherited a swizzle stick, passed down from a distant ancestor - by the description, something like [this](http://www.walshbrothers.co.uk/Stock001/silver/HB4071s.jpg). He had no idea what it was for and just called it “The Stick”. At one point he whips the thing out and holds several people at “gunpoint” with it - they didn’t know what it was either, and it looked ominously enigmatic enough that they didn’t try to call his bluff. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-in-which-future-societies-interpret-modern-culture/595955.md?page=1)