# 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:** 3
**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, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/41 "2025-09-21T22:04:11Z")
_Demolition Man_ had the “oldies” radio station that only played 20th-century ad jingles. ---
**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, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/42 "2025-09-21T22:27:17Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Qadgop the Mercotan was the villain of the stories he was writing. Villain? Let’s look at just what E. E. “Doc” Smith, alias Kimball Kinnison, alias Sybly Whyte actually wrote about me. “Qadgop the Mercotan slithered flatly around the after-bulge of the tranship. One claw dug into the meters-thick armor of pure neutronium, then another. Its terrible xmex-like snout locked on. Its zymolosely polydactile tongue crunched out, crashed down, rasped across. _Slurp! Slurp!_ At each abrasive stroke the groove in the tranship’s plating deepened and Qadgop leered more fiercely. Fools! Did they think that the airlessness of absolute space, the heatlessness of absolute zero, the yieldlessness of absolute neutronium, could stop QADGOP THE MERCOTAN? And the stowaway, that human wench Cynthia, cowering in helpless terror just beyond this thin and fragile wall…” I think too many readers assume I was the bad guy there, based on that short paragraph. Cynthia and I had been dating for a while at the time of the ‘incident’, and she was in urgent need of my rescue. We have been happily settled down together ever since. I’m also a bit cheesed that Kinnison went on to describe our relationship as an ‘affair’ as we were both unattached when we met and during our dating period. Also, he described Cynthia as “beautiful but dumb”. He was correct about the former but not the latter. Cite: [Children of the Lens by E. E. "Doc" Smith, from Project Gutenberg Canada](https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/smithee-childrenofthelens/smithee-childrenofthelens-00-e.html#tocchapter03) Refer to chapter 3 “Kinnison writes a Space Opera” ETA: At least in chapter 27 he said it was a good Space Opera. ---
**Author:** ![vbob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/vbob/32/4439_2.png) [@vbob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vbob)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2025, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/43 "2025-09-21T22:43:01Z")
There’s a somewhat isolated star cluster whose inhabitants circa 4022 AD have a classical music tradition derived from dimly remembered Earth’s Country & Western….I think it’s part of Weber’s ‘Honorverse’ but I can’t find it just now…time for an epic re-read? ---
**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 21, 2025, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/44 "2025-09-21T22:46:34Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > 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. That reminds me of the Martians from the excellent webcomic [A Miracle of Science](https://project-apollo.net/mos/); they are highly diverse in their outfits. The Martian co-protagonist wears a black dress and glitter in her hair, her father dresses a lot like the Tom Baker version of the [Doctor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Doctor), another [looks](https://project-apollo.net/mos/mos023.html) a lot like some supervillain, and so on. Which is especially interesting since while still individuals, they are all linked together as a collective mind (one of the _very_ few benevolent ones in fiction). ---
**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 21, 2025, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/45 "2025-09-21T22:47:10Z")
> [@vbob](#): > > There’s a somewhat isolated star cluster whose inhabitants circa 4022 AD have a classical music tradition derived from dimly remembered Earth’s Country & Western….I think it’s part of Weber’s ‘Honorverse’ but I can’t find it just now…time for an epic re-read? Grayson, from the Honor Harrington series. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2025, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/46 "2025-09-21T22:56:02Z")
In John Brunner’s novel _Shockwave Rider_, there is a detailed description of a computer game called Fencing. I read the book in college and thought the game description was complete enough that I could try writing a program to implement it, but I got stymied because (at that time) I couldn’t come up with an algorithm to determine whether a given point is inside a given triangle. There is an impressively long [list of fictional games](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_games) on Wikipedia. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2025, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/47 "2025-09-21T23:23:06Z")
In _Logan’s Run_ (the novel, not the movie), the narrator mentions sculptures made of something called “fireglass” which is apparently visually impressive, but corrosive and dangerous to work with. Many of the sculptures are unfinished, because the artist died at 21 and took the secret with him. Later, at a party, Logan meets a popular poet, and we get to read the kind of dreck that passes for literature in the world of the future. Later still, Logan and Jessica encounter a re-enactment of the Battle of Gettysburg, with robots portraying the soldiers. ---
**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, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/48 "2025-09-21T23:31:46Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Grayson, from the Honor Harrington series. They also have a martial arts tradition descended from the swordplay in The Seven Samurai, and unlike most off-Earth civilizations, their ancestors made sure to include waffle irons in their limited mass budget when they emigrated. ---
**Author:** ![MrAtoz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@MrAtoz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrAtoz)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2025, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/49 "2025-09-21T23:46:23Z")
> [@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? They have similar old-fashioned taste in music. Like how the crew of Deep Space Nine enjoyed nothing so much as hanging out in a holographic version of a 1960s Vegas-style nightclub. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2025, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/50 "2025-09-21T23:52:44Z")
Or playing a baseball game, dressed as one would in the late 20th Century. ---
**Author:** ![LurkMeister](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3da27b/32.png) [@LurkMeister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LurkMeister)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2025, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/51 "2025-09-22T00:46:44Z")
They also play baseball on Grayson. One of the teams is sponsored by Honor Harrington. ---
**Author:** ![N9IWP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/n9iwp/32/3154_2.png) [@N9IWP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/N9IWP)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2025, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/52 "2025-09-22T00:55:17Z")
**Captain Proton** on ST:Voyager counts I think. Jake Sisko wrote (will write) a novel and a book of short stories IIRC. Brian ---
**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 22, 2025, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/53 "2025-09-22T01:32:56Z")
I appreciate all the suggestions, but how many of these are actually depicted within their respective works, and how many are just talked about? Luke and Obi-Wan don’t just reminisce about some cool band that was playing when they hired Han Solo, we in the audience get to see and hear them. I guess I’m looking for examples like that, and whether they actually feel sufficiently futuristic and alien, or whether they might as well scream out the time and place they were made. Maybe it’s a fool’s errand. I’m in no position to say there won’t be hippies hijacking starships in the 23rd century and singing about brotherhood. And maybe the people who make genre shows have decided the same thing. They know they can’t predict future tastes, so they fall back on having Capt. Picard portray a 40s gumshoe on the holodeck. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2025, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/54 "2025-09-22T02:02:50Z")
Yeah, it’s not a million miles away from Line Dancing or The Macarena really. ---
**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 22, 2025, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/55 "2025-09-22T03:07:32Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > 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. They mention them, but never quote them. The quote I was thinking of was written by Harlan Ellison, and perhaps few others could come up with something that at least sounds like it would be remembered. As for games, there were video games in Clarke’s “The City and the Stars” from the early 1950s. I was amazed when I reread it, since the last time I had read it was before video games. Or at least home ones. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2025, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/56 "2025-09-22T03:11:45Z")
Carper’s Law: The Future is Never About the Future. It Is Always About Today. ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2025, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/57 "2025-09-22T05:28:29Z")
The Flame-Thrower Electric Guitar was actually pretty cool in that last Mad Max movie. ---
**Author:** ![iamatractorboy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iamatractorboy/32/21261_2.png) [@iamatractorboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamatractorboy)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2025, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/58 "2025-09-22T05:49:11Z")
_Futurama_ has the brilliantly terrible _All My Circuits,_ which demonstrates that crappy daytime soap opera is still alive, well and popular in the 31st century. ---
**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 22, 2025, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/59 "2025-09-22T05:55:53Z")
_Futurama_ also has Extreme Toddler Wrestling. [![](https://mltshp-cdn.com/r/584W) ](https://mltshp-cdn.com/r/584W) ---
**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 22, 2025, 11:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260/60 "2025-09-22T11:46:08Z")
And science fiction is about people, not science. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-culture-within-science-fiction-the-good-and-the-bad/1023260.md?page=4)