With summer now more than half over (sigh... how time flies) we close in on the super surprise Pop Culture gallery. Which means we need to take a look at the diversity of the topic.
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When we say "Pop Culture" all we mean is prehistory appearing in fiction. In a nutshell this amounts to creative ways in which prehistoric creatures/environments and humans are brought into contact with each other. Naturally this never happened in real life, but a number of rather creative and imaginative ways of getting the two elements together have emerged in fiction.
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Here I give you a quick overview of the major themes/methods of mixing the two as I see them. This is by no means an exhaustive list, nor will it cover all the odd hybrids that exist. What I'm hoping is any of your favourite prehistoric stories will roughly fall into one or more of these categories. More to the point hopefully this will remind you of your favourite story or inspire to imagine and a new one and create a piece for this gallery!
For the images below I've tried to select photos/images from films and shows. As of such I haven't credited them, as there was no one listed for me to credit. While the majority of my made up genres have examples in film each tends to have dozens of book only entries as well. If you wanted a recommended reading list for any just let me know and I'll fire one up (I've seen 95% of all Dinosaur films made before the mid 2000's, and read a good mass of prehistoric "literature"... also the now
defunct blog
Prehistoric Pulp has done reviews on the majority of
palaeo pop out there...)
Lost Worlds
Probably the oldest fictional archetype, and certainly one of the most appealing, has been the "Lost World" model. In these humans come across some remote corner of the Earth (or in a few really out there stories whole other planets!) in which prehistory never ended, and a palaeo-environment survives. What happens in the story can vary, but inevitable a great deal of discovery and danger ensues.
The means by which prehistory endures are as numerous and diverse as the number of these stories. Geographic isolation is a key ingredient but this can be provided from the reasonable to the outright fantastic. In the reasonable category prehistory has been cut off from its extinction and the outside world by being in/on a remote island, plateau, valley, etc. The more fantastic means of preserving prehistory often are themselves a big part of the story, to explain how the humans arrive. Otherwise it would make little sense for Dinosaurs to be discovered in underground realms, frozen away in the ice, contained within a volcano, all the way on another planet...
Cryptozoologic
A less ambitious version of the Lost World model is to simply have a single element of prehistory survive into the present, nestled among an otherwise normal modern environment. The majority of these tend to be about exploitation by the human discoverers and an ensuing rampage. Though in a few cases it can simply be a tale of discovery.
Time Travel
Probably the other "great" Palaeo Pop Culture genre is the time travel one. Rather than bring prehistory to the present, take the humans back to the past... Or in some cases the past forward to the present. This genre is pretty straight forward, but has a lot of quirky extremes and twists that have been taken.
Scientific Resurrection
A very modern genre to emerge has been that of genetic technology bringing prehistoric creatures back through cloning or other scientific means. While many would claim Jurassic Park is the only real entry into this genre, there are several more (
most of which are admittedly knock offs), but
Carnosaur for example was its own concept.
Radioactive Resurrection
A much older version of scientific resurrection, an equal response to technological innovation, is a radioactive infused prehistory model. These tended to involve long dormant creatures being awoken or reanimated by exposure to radioactivity (whether an explosive or just some radiation). In some of the most famous stories the creatures involved gained super powers, but this was by no means a constant. As these tales typically were a commentary on the dangers of atomic energy there tends to be a lot of destruction for humanity in the end.
Fantasy
Dinotopia by James Gurney
When you can't have a plausible explanation for prehistory and humans to co-exist just make belief they should. As fantasy lets you do anything you want, there's not much for me to say other than this is a very diverse genre.
Hyper "Evolved" Dinosaurs
Another way to bring prehistory into the present and into conflict with modern man is to have intelligent ancestors of the extinct creatures reappear. Whether they hid in a lost world, are a by-product of time travel gone wrong, or returned from outerspace these big brained remnants of the past tend to give us a fair challenge.
Anthropomorphized
Through combination of the intelligent Dinosaur and fantasy genres, fiction writers sometimes want to tell their stories from the prehistoric creatures point of view. Sometimes this is simply a narrative of a normal animal, and is more like a first person documentary. At the extreme we get humanized creatures.
Cave People
While this last category is more plausible than human-like Dinosaurs, I leave it to the end as it is the most fictional of the lot. In the cave people scenario humans and Dinosaurs are presented as having coexisted. Which is of course completely made up, but admittedly fun. In these man battles against the adverse odds of a savage world (in as few clothes as possible :P).
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