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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/35768
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The general rule is this: **The more current something is, the quicker it goes stale.** Allusions are a way of contextualizing a piece of work, a shorthand way to borrow some of the magic of the source(s). But the cost of using them is this. To the same extent that they do work for you for the people that get the allusions, they will fail to do that same work for anyone who doesn't get them.

Particularly for speculative fiction, frequent current or anachronistic allusions diminish the independent reality of the paracosm and make it parasitic on our own reality, reducing it to [a pastiche](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_Player_One). If you really want your reality to live on its own, better to make it self contained, with its own allusions that travel along with it.

With all that said, _everyone_ uses at least some allusions. And Shakespeare, Plato, and the Bible are all still read today, despite being thick with allusions that we no longer understand or have any access to. **The key is to make the work strong enough that it stands up, even if you don't get any of the allusions.**

Original score: 1