The Retrofuturist Chronicles

The Retrofuturist Chronicles are an absurdist allegory.

The chronicles center on a 12-year-old girl, Miranda, who’s affable and bright but disempowered because of her age. Issues that would be of minor concern for adults, are — from Miranda’s perspective — dire crises.

Fortunately, Miranda can always rely on her kind-of-crazy retrofuturist spinster aunt. Aunt Natalie inspires Miranda with fantastic tales of past innovative adventures that have just enough truth in them to be intriguing and uplifting.

In each episode the podcast host — Helen Dwight, SAP Global Head of Marketing for the Intelligent Enterprise — conjures the audience and provides context and exposition about the narrative that follows.

Miranda’s the central character and, as with any central character (Harry Potter, Perry Mason, Luke Skywalker, etc.) it’s intended that the audience will pity them, fear for them, and identify with them. Metaphorically, the audience goes on a journey with the central character.

Aunt Natalie’s a mentor figure. It’s her role to council the central character to help her grow.

The Retrofuturist Chronicles are absurdist not only because there’s complete disregard for time, space, and the laws of nature, but because everything trivial is made to seem important (such as Miranda’s ongoing existential crises), and everything important is trivial (such as Aunt Natalie’s tall tales).

The story\\\'s an allegory in part because on a very deep level, Miranda represents the SAP customer (with problems that seem monumental initially) and Aunt Natalie (who has never seen a problem that cannot be resolved with a little innovation) represents SAP.

Aunt Natalie’s tall tales are patently nonsensical, but they have just enough basis in fact for it to be unclear what\\\'s real and what isn’t. This provides an opportunity for the SAP host to intercede at the end to clear up the confusion. She then refers listeners to blogs that talk about the fact and fiction of Aunt Natalie’s stories in greater depth, and then introduces experts who discuss the referenced industry pain points and the future of technology within that industry in greater detail.