Nostalgia really isn't what it used to be

One of the main themes of 'How Soon Is Now?' - inevitably, for a book with time travel as its central conceit - is the desire so many of us have to return, even briefly, to the past.

That could be a general past (to live before mobile phones, for instance) or a more specific past (to be with a beloved but long-gone pet), but it's something many of us feel, to a greater or lesser extent.

Writing the book, though, I became increasingly aware of how much of our past is around us at all times these days.

Streaming services mean we can watch a favourite film at the click of a button, the instant the impulse hits us.

The same applies to music. I remember, as a teenager, doggedly scouring record shops for seven-inch singles I'd liked and hadn't bought while they were still in the charts. Unless you could find a copy gathering dust somewhere, your only hope of hearing your song of choice was the one-in-a-million chance that it would crop up on the radio some time. Now, vast swathes of recorded history sits on servers, waiting to be reactivated in an instant. For good or ill, that half-remembered Glen Medeiros number that's been niggling at the back of your brain for months is no longer so far away.

All this instant availability has rewired the way our brains think about the past. Take a look at how nostalgia used to work. George Lucas's 'American Graffiti' hit cinemas in 1973, taking a rose-tinted look at the long-ago days of ... 1962.

Similarly, Lenny Kaye's seminal 'Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era 1965 - 1968' gathered together long-lost classics from the golden age of garage rock ... and was released in 1972.

Now, it sometimes seems like all times live together at once, because so much from so many different eras is available all at once.

If someone showed you snapshots of a Top of the Pops audience across a 30-year span, without seeing any of the bands you could probably pin down the date to within a year or two based on the audience's clothes and hair. I'm not so sure you could do that with any random group of young people after about 2010.

Where does all this leave nostalgia? What will the youth of 2024 be nostalgic for in 20 years' time? Will they rebel against the homogenisation of early-21st century life and create their own 'of the moment' scenes and movements, create their own equivalent of the Teds, mods, punks or grunge kids of yore?

I'd like to see it. If nothing else, it'd be a handy way to remember what was going on in 2024.