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I love Dinosaur Comics. They have been the starting point for many great and hilarious conversations. For example, this comic begs the question:

Are there any examples of anachronism used successfully in literature? Would steam punk be an example of this? What is the purpose of anachronism anyway, or is there no intrinsic value? Where did Shakespeare get his MP3?

Does an anachronism have to be an actual physical OBJECT?

Because one thing I liked about Dan Simmons' Illium, part of which deals with the Siege of Troy, was how all those ancient Greeks like Nestor and Oddyseus and Achillies speak like classical homeric characters, except for when they're upset or otherwise thrown off track, whereupon they tend to say things like "******** you and the horse you rode in on".

Shakespeare himself used them like woah. For example, in that scene in Julius Cesar where Brutus sees Julius' ghost, he is reading a book and listening to the chime of a clock. Neither of which existed at the time.

A friend also mentioned that there is a clock shown in the first scene of the play. I think the reason why Shakespeare did this is because his audience would relate to the concept of clocks and books, but not sundails and scrolls. Or perhaps he simply didn't know what everyday life was like in Greece.

What confuses me is that anachronism is refured to as a literary "technique" and yet the only examples I can think of seem to be mistakes on part of the author. So how can you call it a "technique?"

Alright, that makes sense. I think I've seen something like it used in historical fantasy too. In a book I was reading for research, it said that during the late 1700s a entire family might share a single bed, resulting in men sharing the same bed, resulting in the possiblity of very confused readers. Now that I think of it, I've never read a fantasy book where a group of men shared the same bed.

The closest thing I think I could relate to the sharing of beds would be a scene that I heard occured in the book "Eldest." One in which the main character shared a bath with a male elf, which was quite common a couple hundred of years ago. (And prior to the spreading of Christianity, Greeks considered homo sexuality more proper than hetero sexuality.)

Another possible Anachronism would be that the people actually had decent dental plans. Anybody that hasn't brushed their teeth from birth to age ten would suffer so badly from gingivitus that they would be spitting blood from just one go at brushing. Yet some characters in fantasy and such can eat quite healthily. Ever wonder why soup was so popular among the peasants? It's so that they could dip hard objects into it, because without soup they possibly wouldn't even be able to bite their bread. (Though this depends on the individual's luck, as some people lose more teeth or get cavities more than others.)