Reverse anachronism

[robinturner]

We're all used to anachronism in films, from the zipper in Maid Marion's dress in old Robin Hood movies to the crossbows in Arthur, but I'm wondering if there's a word for the kind of anachronism you get when an obsolete item turns up in the future. Reality has a habit of speeding ahead of science fiction in unpredictable ways; for example, mobile phones have got so small that soon people who drop them will be crawling around on hands and knees like someone searching for a popped-out contact lens, but back in the Golden Age of SF, space settlers were still communicating via devices the size of a shoebox.

What prompted this musing was reading Neil Stephenson's Snow Crash, a piece of tongue-in-cheek cyberpunk from the '90s. Some of it is quite predictive, while other parts make you laugh, e.g. "videotape was cheap" - videotape?. OK, I still use videotape, but none of my friends do, and I imagine a time will come soon when camcorders don't actually contain any storage media at all: everything will be wirelessly beamed to some subsidiary of Google as you shoot it. (It will there be automatically edited and touched up, with a special algorithm resolving continuity errors and interesting parts being forwarded to the Department of Homepage Security.) There again, I also use a camera that has actual 36mm 35mm film in it, so I'm in danger of becoming an anachronism myself. People will look at me and say "Hang on, that guy shouldn't exist in 2007."

Comments

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

It's true. The supposedly incredibly advanced alien spaceship in Blake's 7 had computer systems that apparently took up all the available space inside the ship's fittings (and crucial parts of them tended to be located in the most awkward positions, which is probably why Avon, the ship's computer expert, pictured in the icon, is mentioned as suffering occasional back trouble).

As for me, I routinely carry a lace fan and a parasol in hot weather, so I can do anachronism with the best of 'em... :-)

[solri.livejournal.com]

I used to be a big Blake's 7 fan, and loved the low-budget cheesiness of it all. I'm sure the reason they had to use cardboard and styrofoam for the spacehips (and shoot several scenes in the admin block of my alma mater) was they spent all the budget on clothes. I still want Avon's jacket!

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

You're quite right, that's exactly what they did. The BBC, not realising that SF cost more money because of the effects, gave it exactly the same budget as the previous series, which was Softly, Softly. Not only did they blow the budget on clothes, but it was mostly the top halves; for the first series, Paul Darrow was sent to get his shoes and trousers from M&S. I wish I were making that up!

I personally want Avon's gauntlets from the fourth series, as does anyone who has ever tried to bathe a cat.

[vret.livejournal.com]

If I remember correctly Sally Knyvette, who played Jenna Stannis, made her own costumes because the ones she was supplied with were so bad.

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

Now that's an interesting bit of gossip I hadn't heard before!

[vret.livejournal.com]

Now I've written it down, I think I had better check it before it gets passed on too far. I think she mentioned it in a programme on Blake's 7, which I have on a DVD downstairs, that was on recently as part of the BBC's SF cult series, but I wasn't entirely awake when I watched it.

[vret.livejournal.com]

36mm film? That must be difficult to obtain. 35mm is hard enough.

Until recently I would have said that anyone who was really at all serious about photography as art would still be using film. However, our guitarist John Dolan, who is the second nearest thing I know to a pro photographer, has recently started using a digital camera because he thinks it may have the same quality with much greater convenience. Be interesting to see if he goes back to film after using it for a while.

[solri.livejournal.com]

Well if the results there are anything to go by, digital seems to suit him.

My father in law, a semi-retired news photographer, changed to digital because a magazine he does odd jobs for required it. Now I think he prefers it.

[xlnyc.livejournal.com]

my computer has a wicked 2 gigs of hard drive space
i could download the whole internet and still have space

[vret.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I just watched the programme again, and there's no mention of it on there. I think I must have made it up. Perhaps it was something about another programme entirely. Pity, it would have been good.

As partial compensation, here's a couple of quotes from the programme.

Gareth Thomas: "I've never seen any of it. I've never actually watched myself on television. So, no, I've never seen Blake's 7, I've no idea".

Jacqueline Pearce: "I've said this before, and I probably shouldn't say it again, but it was discovering I had been a masturbatory fantasy for an entire generation of young men. I mean, that made a girl feel good".

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

Ah, so it is the same programme I saw a few years ago, then. If I recall correctly, there was also Paul Darrow's wonderfully deadpan line: "The special effects... weren't very special."

Paul is very quick, so this is where I'm going to blow my own trumpet a little and tell you how I once managed to reduce him to stunned silence - that doesn't happen very often! I was present at one of the Kaldor City recording sessions, and Alan Stevens, who was the main force behind Kaldor City, happens to be very annoyed by cuddly toys, so I brought Wilfred the penguin to wind him up. Wilfred is the most odd-looking penguin you could imagine; basically, he looks extremely drunk. Once I judged that Alan wasn't completely up to the ears and might be up for a bit of teasing (don't worry, Alan is a tease too, and was quite some way ahead of me at that point), I went off in search of him, bird in hand.

I rounded a corner and almost walked straight into Paul, at which point I did the only thing that could have been done. I grinned broadly, held up the penguin, and said, "Ah, Paul! This is Wilfred. He's a great fan of yours."

Oh, if only I had had my camera on me... :-D