What would surprise Captain America? The sequel

[lolaraincoat]

So there were a lot of excellent comments on the first edition of this post (both the LJ version and the DW version) but then they made me think about what I left out, so here's some

Comments

First We Take Berlin, Then We Take Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten

[executrix]

Thanks for the Levittown datum! I shall have to remove Levittown reference to Steve's demurrer about price of wedding cake!

If it weren't tendentious, I might have him looking for union labels on clothes.

And he probably would still do final artwork by hand but I bet he'd love the hell out of Illustrator and Photoshop.

Hahaha! I bet Steve was used to being able to either pay the doctor or go to a clinic. And as far as he's concerned, condoms aren't back, they never went away.

Re: First We Take Berlin, Then We Take Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten

[lolaraincoat]

Hah hah, yes! to all of those. In fact, you just inspired me to check, and I see that the first union labels were sewn into garments in 1939.

[blacksquirrel]

Regarding computers, I think this varies for your personal surprise-o-meter, because I was born in 81 and *I'm* surprised by computers a lot of the time. Just because a lot of the basic infrastructure had been in place for a long time doesn't mean that what we are now able to do on a daily basis isn't still pretty amazing and awe-inspiring

[np_complete]

Lola, correct me if I've got details wrong here, but I think Steve might be more bemused than surprised by computers, cellphones, and iPods. One of the several Golden Ages of science fiction would have been going on while he was a teenager. He would have seen wrist-communicators and "communication screens" on the covers of magazines -- heck, in Dick Tracy.

I think he might be disappointed how far we hadn't got with space travel. In the fifties they still thought that by 1980 we'd have colonies on Mars. He'd probably expect luxury hotels on the Moon by 2012.

[lolaraincoat]

Yes, that's it exactly. "Airports have gotten really big and impressive, but where's my personal jetpack that they promised me in True Science in July 1937?"

[lolaraincoat]

I mean they thawed him out too late for him to even get a ride on the Concorde, poor guy.

[venivincere]

All excellent points! Your rants make me want to try and write a realistic Steve story, but I am very much not a historian, so I don't know how it would turn out. I don't think I'd be able to get over the profound grief he must be feeling having lost everyone he knows, and the spooky Twilight Zone feeling that his world has recognizable landmarks and yet is so different in unexpected ways. Honestly, I don't understand how he's not having a mental breakdown.

[lolaraincoat]

Well, you can always ask one of the historians on your f'list to beta, you know! Me, for instance - I'd history-pick for you if you want.

[venivincere]

Ooh, you tempt me. I'm going to ruminate on some ideas...

[amelia_eve]

I'm enjoying this discussion even though I have not seen the movie nor read the fic. But I often look at this question through the lens of "what sci fi got wrong." To me it's not so much the big things (damn flying cars) as the daily texture of life things

[lolaraincoat]

Hah, yes. Yes to all this, especially the smoking. It's shocking how completely that changed, at least in the parts of the world where I spend any time. In the mid-90s when I last visited Paris, though, I kept having to flee people's apartments and bars and just about any enclosed space (other than the apartment I was living in and some museums) because the smoke was unbearable. But that level of smoke would have been just normal for New York ten years earlier, and I had lived with it quite happily.

And beyond material culture, the thing that sci-fi got wrong and continues to get wrong to me is the nature of cultural, social, and political change. A novel with the premise "In 1990 everyone who lives on the moon will have big communal (but still strictly heterosexual) marriages!" is wronger on ways that cultures change than it is on the possibility and timing of space colonization.

[amelia_eve]

Oh yeah, I think he would be startled by the levels of divorce and mainstream single parenting, which of course is largely a function of women's fuller integration into the workforce.

Also, nobody wears hats.

[rosalui]

Late comment, but - this is utterly wonderful, and I thank you for writing it