lit classes in 2503

[khyron1144]

Shakespeare's writing is about 500 years old, but we still study it today in high school English classes. Shakespeare wrote for the general populace as much as he did for the educated folk.

Thus my predictions for what they'll be reading in 2503:
Stephen King
Robert E. Howard
Edgar Rice Burroughs
H. P. Lovecraft
Robert Bloch

[Iron Bonny Shades]

I'd throw tolkein into the mix as well.

As well as two 19th century examples

Jules verne and hg wells.

[khyron1144]

Okay I can agree to those.

I left off Edgar Allen Poe.

Don't know how I forgot him.

[Draxy]

Let's not forget that ours is not the only genre either.

Asimov
Heinlien
Haldeman
Bradbury
Herbert

and even more

Clancy
Grisham
Dafoe

and ever on and on.

Willie was lucky. He had nothing much in the way of real competition, but nowadays...

Hey, with any luck, if things continue to develope for me, maybe one day the single pseudonym "Isshia" will stand in there with the giants.

I won't hold my breath though.


Draxy

[khyron1144]

And maybe if we're lucky:

Douglas Adams
P. G. Wodehouse
Scott Adams (I'm thinking of his prose in books like The Dilbert Future, and his one entirley prose book God's Debris, but maybe comics will be respected in the future)

And on that note:
Alan Moore
Neil Gaiman
Frank Miller (although he seems a bit over-rated to me)
Gary Larson

[Sharess]

well if it is not part of the required reading now it had better be in 2503 if not sooner the book "Jonathen Livingston Seagull"

[Arcaneye]

Classic Horror/Gothic-Anne Rice. <cue maniacal laighter>

[khyron1144]

I like Anne Rice okay, but her style seems too thick and literary for me.


In many of Stephen King's books it feels like your friend has stumbled into your house breathless from a long run and is telling you a story about a weird experience he just had.

With Anne Rice it always feels like you're reading a book.

[Merkuri]

khyron1144 said:

In many of Stephen King's books it feels like your friend has stumbled into your house breathless from a long run and is telling you a story about a weird experience he just had.

With Anne Rice it always feels like you're reading a book.

Which is why they will probably read Anne Rice over Stephen King.

[Shura]

James Clavell might be a candidate, and Umberto Eco definately should be.

[khyron1144]

Merkuri said:

Which is why they will probably read Anne Rice over Stephen King.

Yes, but my central thesis is that in 500 years pop literature becomes literature, while literature becomes a curiousity for academics.

[Hussar]

Bud, I hate to tell you, but Anne Rice is hardly literature and Stephen King is barely literate.

Talk about highly over rated authors. Stephen King hasn't produced a single decent novel in a decade. The last good thing he wrote was Misery. After that, he started cranking out 1000+ page tmes all with the same formula. I stopped reading King after early 90's simply because everything he wrote was the same crap.

Anne Rice is a soft core porn writer who managed to get lucky once. After The Vampire Lestat, most of her books are again, formulaic Harlequin Romance versions of actual horror novels.

Neither Rice nor King will be remembered 20 years after their deaths.

While I love a lot of the fantasy authors you have stuck up here, most people outside of the fantasy genre haven't a clue who Lovecraft, Howard or Burroughs is. It's unfortunate but true.

Using Shakespeare as a guide, given the popularity of Shakespeare at the time, 500 years from now we'll be reading Harry Potter. No other book in the fantasy genre can even come close to the popularity of these books. (unfortunately ) The newspaper was reporting the other day that Rowlings will become the first BILLIONAIRE author. There isn't a single living author that comes even close to that level of popularity.

[Merkuri]

Now, there also begs the question of what else they will consider "literature." Shakespear was a playwrite, and they probably didn't lump plays in with books back then. Anybody who "read" a play without planning to act it out was screwy. Yet today we lump it in with Moby Dick and War and Peace as classic "literature." What else will go into that category in 500 years? Movies? TV shows?

[Wyrmfire]

I bet that movies like "Casblanca" and "Gone with the wind" will be, at least, and some of the earlier disney movies will be studied as a take on our culture's views of fairy tales. As for some more modern movies, I would put money on Star Wars, at least.

[Hussar]

Well, Merkuri, just as a point, the novel didn't even exist in Shakespeare's time. It wasn't an issue. There were not enough literate people back then to make publishing novels profitable. The novel didn't really make an appearance until the very late 18th century, and really didn't come into it's own until the 19th century. There's a reason we don't study 16th century novels. There weren't any.

That is an interesting point. What will we consider "literature" 500 years from now. We certainly don't consider the dime store novel to be literature now. Moby Dick and War and Piece at least have the novel form in common. They do share some stylistic points which make a comparison possible. All novels do to some extent simply by being written in novel form instead of being a short story or a poem or whatever.

Of course, we are assuming that English will still be a living language 500 years from now. Which, considering the population demographics of the world, is a pretty big if.