+ Reply to thread
Results 1 to 13 of 13

Thread: Books that were written just a few short years ago...

  1. #1
    Prehistoric Bitchslapper Sarahfeena's avatar
    Registered
    Mar 2009
    Location
    Chicagoland
    Posts
    5,891

    Default Books that were written just a few short years ago...

    are so dated due to rapid changes in technology that it's really kind of amusing.

    For instance, I just read two novels written in the mid-90s. People are using pay phones, looking things up in the yellow pages, researching travel in guide books. It seems so quaint...like they were written in the 50s. And yet...this was my life, well into adulthood. It's kinda crazy.

  2. #2
    Clueless but well-meaning Hatshepsut's avatar
    Registered
    Mar 2009
    Location
    Indonesia
    Posts
    2,832

    Default

    I know what you mean! I read a lot of mystery novels, and I'm guessing that writers' conventions in the past decade or so included lots of workshops on "dealing with new personal technology: how it affects plot twists." It used to be that the heroine could simply be attacked or kidnapped, but now that darn cell phone is always available to call for rescue!

    In many, many, MANY books I have read lately, the cell phone gets lost, is forgotten, or conveniently runs out of power. These girl detectives really need to keep better track.

  3. #3
    Prehistoric Bitchslapper Sarahfeena's avatar
    Registered
    Mar 2009
    Location
    Chicagoland
    Posts
    5,891

    Default

    Ha ha! I read that in that series by...who is it, Sue Grafton? The ones with the letters in the titles ("A is for..."), they are all set in the 80s. She started writing them then, and she kept writing them as if they were happening one right after the other, so basically they are still set in the 80s. She says that's why the characters don't have cell phones, internet, etc. I wonder if that's why she did it...because cell phones are too inconvenient to mystery plotting!

  4. #4
    Oliphaunt The Original An Gadaí's avatar
    Registered
    Mar 2009
    Location
    Nowhere
    Posts
    2,933

    Default

    We had a book in our store (god we could well still have it somewhere) called something like E-Love, the whole premise of which was this (at the time) bizarre set-up where people fall in love over exchanged emails. Of course people still send email even if its popularity has been dented by facebook and the like, but the novelty of the premise has long since fallen by the wayside, same with other books dealing with online dating etc. I'd hazard that most dating now in the west contains a huge dollup of online activity, and online dating profiles are normal, not weird anymore.

    Not a book, but the film, The Black Windmill was on the other day, a spy thriller from the '70s. There's a fairly big scene where a character visits the library of the National Trust to find out about a place where there are two prominent windmills. She finds it, and calls the protagonist, who is in a bar waiting for the call. Now either the main character would google it.

    Cell phones are funny though because they are less reliable than landlines typically. Dropped calls, calls not answered cos the phone is in another room, lack of signal, bad line etc. all are deliberately used to mitigate the phone's effects on the story, yet all of these things are extremely common in real life. Something else that's an issue here at least, which I don't know whether it has been dealt with in drama is running out of credit, many phones here are pay-as-you-go.

    On the other hand, what amazes me is books from the '50s where phoneboxes aside they could have been written yesterday. One of Updike's novels, I believe it was Rabbit, Run has an extended critique of consumerism, mass marketing etc. that's as resonant today as when it was written. The characters in the book seem thoroughly modern in their sensibilities in a way I didn't think occurred until perhaps the '60s or later.

  5. #5
    Administrator CatInASuit's avatar
    Registered
    Feb 2009
    Location
    Coulsdon Cat Basket
    Posts
    10,342

    Default

    It's the same with films nowadays as well, just go back and watch Wall Street. Although the attitudes haven't changed all the technology has.

    I don't mind things changing in books if they actually date the book so you know what years you are dealing with. It's those books that try to stay modern and date themselves badly that always make me chuckle.
    In the land of the blind, the one-arm man is king.

  6. #6
    Prehistoric Bitchslapper Sarahfeena's avatar
    Registered
    Mar 2009
    Location
    Chicagoland
    Posts
    5,891

    Default

    AG, the book I'm reading has a situation that reminds me of what you said about The Black Windmill. It has a mystery involving an old lighthouse, and the main character travels across the country to see it, only to find out that it was destroyed in a hurricane 10 years prior. She didn't know, because she had an old reference book. As you said, these days, you would google information about the lighthouse, and Wikipedia would tell you everything you needed to know about it in excruciating detail.

  7. #7
    Elen síla lumenn' omentielvo What Exit?'s avatar
    Registered
    Feb 2009
    Location
    Central NJ (near Bree)
    Posts
    10,071

    Default

    Updike was pretty cutting edge though and not normal. I know his stories were a favorite of the Playboy's editing staff for that reason.

  8. #8
    Prehistoric Bitchslapper Sarahfeena's avatar
    Registered
    Mar 2009
    Location
    Chicagoland
    Posts
    5,891

    Default

    I've got two from television. Saw a first-season episode of Sex and the City the other day, so that was, what, around 1998? They were talking on cell phones that looked like this:



    And just now I caught a rerun of Judging Amy, which is probably around the same vintage as SatC, and one of the characters is writing a novel. Of course, the computer has an old-school CRT monitor, but the thing that really made it look dated is that he's using Word Perfect, so the screen looks like so:


  9. #9
    Oliphaunt The Original An Gadaí's avatar
    Registered
    Mar 2009
    Location
    Nowhere
    Posts
    2,933

    Default

    That's a good one Sarah. It's not unknown however to still see old computer systems in some stores with the green screens. They're increasingly rare but you still see them occasionally. Presumably they installed a workhorse that fulfills their needs even after a couple of decades.

  10. #10
    Stegodon
    Registered
    Jan 2010
    Location
    in a house
    Posts
    131

    Default

    Quote Originally posted by The Original An Gadaí View post
    That's a good one Sarah. It's not unknown however to still see old computer systems in some stores with the green screens. They're increasingly rare but you still see them occasionally. Presumably they installed a workhorse that fulfills their needs even after a couple of decades.
    At my work we were using a computer as a label printer up until this year that ran on a DOS program. There was no Windows, it had the 5 inch floppy disc slot only, and a green screen with burn-in marks from being left on all the time with only the one program.

    It worked just fine until the management decided they needed the space on the bench where it had sat for twenty years and threw away the printer. Now, we have no label printer.

  11. #11
    The Queen Zuul's avatar
    Registered
    Mar 2009
    Location
    Wisconsin
    Posts
    9,908

    Default

    This reminds me of a hilariously silly plot twist in a soap opera Marsilia watches, that I was vaguely aware of because she was living with me at the time. A character was kidnapped and the kidnapper was using her phone to send out text messages pretending to be her, telling people how much the kidnapping victim hated them and how she had run away. And of course no one ever thought it was odd that she'd only share these things by text, never actually speaking on the phone.

    I guess I have to give them credit for at least acknowledging that the people looking for the kidnapping victim would be trying to contact her via her cellphone.
    So now they are just dirt-covered English people in fur pelts with credit cards.

  12. #12
    A Groupie Marsilia's avatar
    Registered
    Mar 2009
    Location
    Mississippi
    Posts
    1,988

    Default

    Quote Originally posted by Zuul View post
    This reminds me of a hilariously silly plot twist in a soap opera Marsilia watches, that I was vaguely aware of because she was living with me at the time. A character was kidnapped and the kidnapper was using her phone to send out text messages pretending to be her, telling people how much the kidnapping victim hated them and how she had run away. And of course no one ever thought it was odd that she'd only share these things by text, never actually speaking on the phone.
    The other soap I watch did something similar, recently, but the texts weren't so much saying she hated people as telling her husband to have an affair with his brother's girlfriend. The same soap had a kidnapper continue to update his victim's "MyFace" account with posts meant to upset the woman the victim supposedly left at the alter.
    Last edited by Marsilia; 14 Sep 2011 at 12:27 PM.
    So, I'll whisper in the dark, hoping you'll hear me.

  13. #13
    The Queen Zuul's avatar
    Registered
    Mar 2009
    Location
    Wisconsin
    Posts
    9,908

    Default

    That's generally something you want to confirm with more than a text message.

    Back during college I was playing a tabletop game with some friends. I don't recall if the game itself came out before cellphones were ubiquitous or not, but in the game we were playing fallen angels who had the power of telepathy. The limitation was that they had to subvocalize, and thus would be mistaken for crazy people babbling to themselves in the streets. During character creation, it led to this exchange:

    Me: So I can speak to any other member of my party, at any time, no matter where they are? But I have to mumble?
    GM: Yes, that's right.
    Me: *grabs pencil*
    GM: What are you doing?
    Me: Adding a Bluetooth earpiece to my inventory.

    He didn't really admire my cleverness, alas.
    So now they are just dirt-covered English people in fur pelts with credit cards.

+ Reply to thread

Posting rules

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts