I love old fiction, however I cannot read old fiction that references or is inspired by modern events. The novel is as much an instrument of contemporary social

I love old fiction, however I cannot read old fiction that references or is inspired by modern events. The novel is as much an instrument of contemporary social commentary as much as it is anything and to ignore this is to confuse the entire subject. Books like Dead Air by Ian Banks, or Pattern Recognition by William Gibson, are simply not available in earlier eras as their narrative reference points did not yet exist. It is like looking for something in the golden age of Hollywood that closely resembles Scott Pilgrim vs The World. Without the culture of computer games to draw on, that film could not get made.