# Pop culture within science fiction; the good and the bad **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** movies, star-trek-paramount\ **Created:** [September 21, 2025, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260 "2025-09-21T14:19:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2025, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/21 "2025-09-21T18:48:16Z")
Fashion is a subset of pop culture that SF not only usually gets wrong but is lazy in depicting. They’ll spend some time creating a unique (and often impractical) style and extrapolate from that what everybody in the universe wears. I’ve always admired the variety of fashions ordinary people wear in the **2000AD Judge Dredd** comics. They don’t all wear the same thing and many are obviously trying to individualize their look while at the same time reflecting the social strata they exist in. The garish colors and the weird things written on shirts and hats seem very realistic to me. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2025, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/22 "2025-09-21T19:01:31Z")
> [@blondebear](#): > > How about [Jet Screamer](https://youtu.be/U15rzqfSofo?feature=shared) from The Jetsons? Eep Opp Ork A-A I think that song is actually good. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2025, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/23 "2025-09-21T20:01:18Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Paging @Qadgop_the_Mercotan > > > [@mbh](#): > > > > For his Martian novels, Edgar Rice Burroughs created a chess-like game called [jetan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jetan). I have heard that die-hard fans have played it. > > It’s a game that’s only playable by Martians. It’s trivially easy to force a draw (or rather, if you’re willing to draw but your opponent isn’t, it’s trivially easy to win), but that doesn’t matter for Martians, because they’d never do something as unmanly as deliberately offer a draw. While I read all ERB’s Martian books (and most of his others) obsessively as a teen, I only vaguely remember Jetan beng mentioned. I suspect @Chronos is spot on. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2025, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/24 "2025-09-21T20:09:40Z")
Ever notice that people in a culture 200 years in the future have a fixation on quoting things from 200 years in the past - the time when the script was written or before? Like there was no culture between then and the time of the story? The only exception I can think of is when Kirk quoted a writer from Alpha Centauri to Edith Keeler in “The City on the Edge of Forever.” ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2025, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/25 "2025-09-21T20:23:16Z")
They usually add one for decency sake, “This situation is much like stories told by Platus, Shakespeare, Shaw, and Gropchook the Elder of Rigel 9.” ---
**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 21, 2025, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/26 "2025-09-21T20:33:59Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Ever notice that people in a culture 200 years in the future have a fixation on quoting things from 200 years in the past - the time when the script was written or before? Like there was no culture between then and the time of the story? For that, the writers have to actually invent the quote, and if a writer can write something so good that it sounds like something that would be quoted in the future, they’ll use it in an actual story, not waste it as an out-of-context quote. Or in other words: if you want to quote the 23rd-Century Shakespeare, you have to be as good a writer as the 16th-Century Shakespeare. And nobody is. ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2025, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/27 "2025-09-21T20:36:03Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > They usually add one for decency sake, “This situation is much like stories told by Platus, Shakespeare, Shaw, and Gropchook the Elder of Rigel 9.” There’s a trope for that: > **[Famous, Famous, Fictional - TV Tropes](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FamousFamousFictional)** > > When several examples of something are being listed in Speculative Fiction, a couple of them will be from our time (or timeline if it's Alternate History), and the final one will be one from the future (or post-divergence Alternate History). The … ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2025, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/28 "2025-09-21T20:36:53Z")
Each episode of _Andromeda_ started with a fake future quote > **[Andromeda Intro Quotes](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/andromeda-intro-quotes.17441/)** > > Dose anyone know where I can Find the Quotes or Phrases show in the opening moments of Andromeda??? > > Especialy the quote that ends "We die with our faces to the fire we die like Lancers" ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2025, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/29 "2025-09-21T20:37:21Z")
> [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#): > > While I read all ERB’s Martian books (and most of his others) obsessively as a teen, I only vaguely remember Jetan beng mentioned. I suspect @Chronos is spot on. The problem is that there are only two way to win: Capture the Princess, or for one Warlord to kill the opposing Warlord. If any other piece kills the opposing Warlord, it’s a draw. Well, it’s trivial to avoid your Warlord getting killed by the other Warlord (just never move next to him), and the Princess is really hard to capture, but (if you’re willing to draw), there’s nothing to stop your Warlord from just running on a rampage through the enemy pieces. And of course, I @ed you because you yourself are an example of pop culture within science fiction. IIRC, in one of the Lensmen books, one of the Lensmen is working undercover, and had as his cover story that he was a pulp fiction writer, and Qadgop the Mercotan was the villain of the stories he was writing. ---
**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 21, 2025, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/30 "2025-09-21T20:39:01Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > They usually add one for decency sake, “This situation is much like stories told by Platus, Shakespeare, Shaw, and Gropchook the Elder of Rigel 9.” Wht do you think of the theory that Gropchook’s works were actually written by Christopher Marlowe? ---
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2025, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/31 "2025-09-21T21:00:22Z")
Barsoomians are often irrational. They always carry radium pistols but never use them, preferring to engage in close combat sword fights. ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2025, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/32 "2025-09-21T21:16:28Z")
This is how the makers of “Raumpatrouille Orion” (Space Patrol Orion) in mid-sixties Germany imagined future dancing: [![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/znN0KJUd_0M/hqdefault.jpg?sqp=-oaymwEmCOADEOgC8quKqQMa8AEB-AH-BIAC4AOKAgwIABABGGUgZShlMA8=&rs=AOn4CLCuClXomJ87OD6ZSxp8nRWHlsfUuA "Raumpatrouille Orion - Tanz den Rücksturz (Teil 7 von 7)") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znN0KJUd_0M) ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2025, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/33 "2025-09-21T21:22:32Z")
Can’t say it stands out from any other idiotic dance craze that actually has existed. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2025, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/34 "2025-09-21T21:24:29Z")
“This is the part of _Sprockets_ when we dance!” ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2025, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/35 "2025-09-21T21:27:05Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > This is how the makers of “Raumpatrouille Orion” (Space Patrol Orion) in mid-sixties Germany imagined future dancing Curses! That is the exact clip I wanted to post! Someone went to the trouble of choreographing a dance, but no-one in the main cast even look at it or mention it at all. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2025, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/36 "2025-09-21T21:28:59Z")
I think Raquel Welch nailed it… [![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ShpHqjM-zAQ/hqdefault.jpg "Raquel Welch - Space Dance (1970)") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShpHqjM-zAQ) ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2025, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/37 "2025-09-21T21:40:39Z")
> [@mbh](#): > > For his Martian novels, Edgar Rice Burroughs created a chess-like game called [jetan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jetan). I have heard that die-hard fans have played it. John Gorman’s Gor books had some pseudo-chess game that was evidence of the good player’s brilliance. Patrick Rothfuss’s incomplete universe had a game called Tak, that does exist now. Brandon Sanderson’s stormlight universe has a warlike strategy game (King’s Puzzle) that is a training game for leaders. ---
**Author:** ![Hoops](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hoops/32/6408_2.png) [@Hoops](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hoops)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2025, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/38 "2025-09-21T21:41:44Z")
William Gibson is really good at this. Many of his books feature fictional pop stars, artists, fashion designers, etc. In particular, he seems interested in exploring various aspects of fandom and fame, and how the concept of entertainment itself might evolve given futuristic technology. Some examples: In [Mona Lisa Overdrive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa_Overdrive), we meet a simstim artist, Angie—only the first name is necessary for this world famous star of an entertainment form where the artist’s full sensory experiences are recorded and then edited and packaged into something like a movie or an album. In [The Peripheral](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peripheral), there is Daedra—again so famous, no last name needed, whose profession is something like a performance artist crossed with a social media influencer. In each of her works, she tattoos her entire skin in a thematic way, stages sort of [happenings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happening) and finishes the work by having herself flayed and the skin made into a visual display (medical technology being capable of conveniently regrowing the skin in this scenario). In [Idoru](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idoru), there’s a famous band called Lo/Rez, and the plot begins when the Seattle chapter of their fan club sends a representative to Japan to investigate the odd announcement that the lead singer is planning to marry a Japanese virtual pop star. (David Bowie makes an uncredited cameo as the UI to a piece of music software). This book also has a really detailed imagined evolution of reality TV called Slitscan which features prominently in the plot. I won’t go on—but I could; there’s lots of stuff like this in his books. Highly recommend Mr Gibson! ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2025, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/39 "2025-09-21T21:47:23Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Like there was no culture between then and the time of the story? There’s the old sci fi rule of two historical, one made up. “The greatest philosophers of all time, like Plato, Socrates, or Flurgh from Planet Ten.” ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2025, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/40 "2025-09-21T21:53:00Z")
> [@eburacum45](#): > > Curses! That is the exact clip I wanted to post! Someone went to the trouble of choreographing a dance, but no-one in the main cast even look at it or mention it at all. Right, because from their point of view, it’s just ordinary people doing an ordinary dance. And they also did a pretty good job of having everyone dressed differently, and different from how we dress now, but still looking like a plausible evolution of current fashions. Not bad at all. And while we’re at it with fictional equivalents of chess, in Jim Butcher’s Codex Alera, there’s a game called “ludus” (which is of course just Latin for “game”). Beyond being chess-like, there’s not much detail on the rules, beyond there being another, smaller board mounted above the main board to represent flying units (something which is a significant part of warfare in their world). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260.md?page=3)