Can deliberate Chop Suey work?

I'm writing a sci-fi universe, and there's two factors that seem to be coming up again and again:

• It's 20 Minutes in the Future of what's ostensibly our Earth. Since This Is Reality is in quite a lot of force*
  ^{I took a little license with the physics and biology}
  , modern and later pop culture exists. However, in Real Life inventors, designers and so on are continually inspired by past pop culture, which makes me think that we'd end up with some Defictionalization as Technology Marches On.
• A posthuman intelligence is inspiring and modifying pop culture specifically to influence human development and bring about The Singularity and other developments. (i.e. The example we notice, and which kicks off the plot, is that its modified a nearby planet to match a particular cliche. )

The combination of these two is that, logically, other works will be referenced quite a lot. In other circumstances, this would lead to Fan Fic Chop Suey, but I'm not writing in any fandom; all of the references are acknowledged as being fictional. On the face of it, it looks like I'm stealing ideas, but I don't think I'm plagiarizing anything for the simple reason that my characters react differently and end up in different circumstances than the "original" ones. (Mostly because they learned the applicable Aesops and are generally very Genre Savvy.) Basically, although the "staples" are there, like war robots and creepy AIs, what they're holding together is entirely different.

tl;dr: Can Pop Culture Chop Suey be entertaining?

edited 9th May '11 2:39:47 PM by Yej

I've done this myself, so I quite obviously think it work. As no one else has ever read my materials, that may just be my opinion, though. But it's important to note that Real Life is massively influenced by pop culture, which is one reason why Genre Blindness is so irritating. I haven't seen anything to the extreme you're taking it, but in regards to simply defictionalized technology and the like, I'll be surprised if that doesn't happen in the future to some extent.

Yeah, the idea sort of came about because I hadn't seen anyone show how much pop culture ends up influencing people. I'm just trying to make sure I'm not taking it too far.

edited 10th May '11 2:21:31 PM by Yej

I thought a posthuman intelligence was the result of the singularity. Unless you're saying it's modifying the past in order to ensure its existence.

Like the Eschaton?

edited 11th May '11 2:01:34 AM by RiotousRascal

You know, that's the first thing that came to my mind as well. Hm.

Not sure why all this "making pop culture real" stuff would help ensure its existence, though. Are we talking a Stable Time Loop here, or what?

Yes. One of the "other developments" that appears before the Singularity is a FTL device, which then gets jury-rigged into a time machine.

edited 11th May '11 2:15:54 PM by Yej

Just as long as the words "Minkowski Diagram" and "Novikov self-consistency Principle" are used anywhere in it, anywhere at all, I'll read it.

But wouldn't the Novikov self-consistency principle render the entire proposed plot pointless?

I didn't say it had to be true, they just have to talk about it.

Like,

"Conventional logic dictates that time travel shouldn't be able to cause paradoxes, because of the Novikov Self-consistency principle."

"For that reason, my dear, I decided to go and cause one anyway."

edited 13th May '11 5:54:36 AM by RiotousRascal

That's good to know, since the two come up a lot. (The self-consistency principle even becomes a minor plot point near the beginning.)

It works because He Already Changed The Past in such a way that it's nigh-impossible to see that the past was changed at all. (Except when he wants it to be seen.)

However, the mechanics of a Stable Time Loop x Xanatos Gambit weren't really what I wanted to discuss. Unfortunately, I can't really think of a comparison to POP Culture Chop Suey.

edited 13th May '11 1:24:38 PM by Yej