Cultural Impact
In May 1999, The Onion ran a front-page article headlined "Society For Creative Anachronism Seizes Control Of Russia" featuring photos of actual SCA participants from the Barony of Jaravellir (Madison, Wisconsin).
Members of the SCA are given pivotal roles in S.M. Stirling's Emberverse series, where their skills in pre-industrial technology and warfare become invaluable in helping humanity adapt when all modern technology (including firearms) ceases working.
In his conclusion to the Space Odyssey series, 3001: The Final Odyssey; Arthur C. Clarke portrays the SCA as still being active in the year 3001.
The novel Murder at the War (Knightfall in paperback edition) is a murder mystery set entirely at the SCA's largest annual event, Pennsic War.
In David Weber's science fiction novel Honor Among Enemies, main character Honor Harrington mentions that her uncle is a member of the SCA and that he taught her to shoot from the hip (the time the SCA covers having been moved up to the 19th century in the future era in which the novel is set, to include cowboy and Civil War reenactors).
In Christopher Stasheff's "Warlock" series the inhabitants of the planet Gramarye are revealed to be descended from SCA participants. A prequel, Escape Velocity, describes how the Scadians first came to Gramarye, and how lands were assigned to the royal peers.
In Ariel (1983), a post-apocalyptic fantasy by Steven R. Boyett, technology suddenly stops working and sorcery and swordfight take over. Several characters who are former SCA members attribute their survival to their SCA experience.
The fantasy novel The Folk of the Air by Peter S. Beagle was written after the author attended a few early SCA events circa 1968; but he has repeatedly stated that he then studiously avoided any contact with the actual SCA itself for almost two decades, so that his description of a fictitious "League for Archaic Pleasures" would not be "contaminated" by contact with the actual real-life organization.
In Number of the Beast, Robert A. Heinlein portrayed an SCA tournament where live weapons were used and the battles actually fought to the 'death'. The defeated combatants were either transported to an alternate reality where medical technology was advanced enough that they could be revived from any wound or transported to the alternate reality that was Valhalla. The contestants' desires were placed in sealed envelopes prior to the tournament.
In John Ringo's "Council Wars" science-fiction series, characters with SCA or SCA-like experience help their society recover from a catastrophic loss of technology.
Read more about this topic: Society For Creative Anachronism
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