1. A few quick thoughts on Planet of the Apes, the Statue of Liberty, Percy Bysshe Shelley & the ruins of futurity.
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8. In late 18th and early 19th century, archeology created a new sense of past as a living presence in the form of ruins: a littered past.
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9. Percy Shelley was among the poets most influenced by new awareness of the past as ruins: "Ozymandias" https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias …
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10. It's no accident that the ruin-loving Shelley was married to first real science fiction writer: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
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11. Science fiction is an attempt to apply historical thinking to the future: to imagine a future as different as the past.
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12. One powerful trope in science fiction is the ruins of futurity: imaging contemporary monuments turning into Ozymandias' statue.
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13. There's a second aspect to the ruins of futurity, which is that the destruction of monuments is secretly thrilling.
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14. Think of the countless science fiction movies where the Statue of Liberty, Eiffel Tower, White House, Taj Mahal, Pyramids are destroyed.
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15. In 1927, the Russian fantasist Sigismund Krzyzanowski imagined the Eiffel Tower coming to life.pic.twitter.com/8kssuCMfqH
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16. Krzyzanowski's fantasy is rooted in the fear monuments can provoke. They loom over us, burden us, belittle us. We want to destroy them
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17. Here's a 1953 cover for Fantastic Universe which might have influenced the Planet of the Apes final scene.pic.twitter.com/hqtTEvWTDQ
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18. And here's the same artist (Alex Schomberg) riffing on theme in 1964 (four years before Planet of the Apes).pic.twitter.com/8KPAX6l6oi
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19. I'll just end with the great Jack Kirby riffing on this them, post-Planet of the Apes, in Kamandipic.twitter.com/Ss7sSsxaMB
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End of conversation
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