: Re: Referencing modern pop culture in science fiction A geek today is quite likely to reference the pop culture of 30 years ago: "Do or do not, there is no try", "Beam me up, Scotty" and "Ground

@Bryan361

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Easy answer: Don't include anachronistic pop culture references. "writing a geeky character who does not make such references is almost unrealistic" Well, maybe, but surely not jarringly so. I'm a geeky person. If I spent a few hours with other geeky friends and no one made any sort of reference to a science fiction movie, it's possible that that would be unusual. But I can't imagine that I would go home saying, "Zounds, that was really weird!! Nobody made any Star Wars reference the WHOLE evening!! What happened to these people?" I wouldn't even particularly notice.

If your story is set 100 years in the future, then their view of our present will presumably be comparable to our view of 1918. When was the last time you made a light-hearted reference to a book or movie from 1918 while chatting with a group of friends? I'm trying to think of examples comparable to "beam me up Scotty" from casual conversations, and, wow, not coming. I heard someone refer to Rudyard Kipling's line, "a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke" once. Oh, the Sherlock Holmes books were from that era, so maybe, "elementary, my dear Watson". (Even though that line actually comes from much later movies and is not found in the original books.)

Because frankly, "pop culture" tends to mean "contemporary culture". Not the great works of our civilization, but the things we grew up with as kids. 20 or 30 years from now pop culture references are going to be to whatever kids and young people are watching today, not to Star Trek TOS and Man From Uncle.

Personally, I'd find it jarring to have characters in 2120 casually talking about Star Wars and Star Trek. Just like I would find it jarring if a novel set in 2018 had teenagers making casual references to Laurel and Hardy or Charlie Chaplain.

If you need such references to make your story work, you could have one oddball character who is fascinated by the works of 100 years ago and who is presented in the story as having an odd fascination with this era. But frankly, I've seen many writers try to do this and it always come across to me as lame. This person in the far future just happens to be fascinated by the time that just coincidentally is when the writer of the story happens to live. It always comes across to me as very strained.

Why do you want to include such pop culture references? What do they do for your story? Do they serve a real purpose or did you just want to include them because you liked Star Wars or whatever and want to mention it? If that's the case, I'd say, Don't.

You can create your own pseudo-pop culture references. Have you ever noticed that comedians often tell a joke early in their act, and then at the end make some reference to that early joke? It gives the audience a feel like they're part of an "in joke". You can always do that.

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