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I’ve read in the news that some German music band called SDP made a new album "Zurück in die Zukunst".

Why is it not Zukunft instead of Zukunst? What does this mean?

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It is a play on words. Zurück in die Zukunft is the German title of a popular movie series (Back to the future). I guess they replaced f with s to mix in the word Kunst (art). What this might mean is left to the reader’s interpretation …

Edit: Thinking about it, I wonder whether it is intentional or purely coincidental that in old blackletter fonts the s letter used in Kunst (Kunſt) looks quite similar (to the untrained eye, at least) to the letter f. Example on Google Books

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  • It's not a font problem, see here.
    – Martin Schröder
    May 22, 2015 at 22:42
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    @MartinSchröder I never meant it to be a font problem. I only speculated whether the similarity of the two words when using such a font might have something to do with it. They don't seem to use that similarity in their graphics material, but this doesn't exclude other kind of relationships, e.g. initially inspiring one member of the band for that word game. But as I wrote: it can also be just pure coincidence.
    – Matthias
    May 22, 2015 at 22:51
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    They seem to use word games a lot. The name 'SDP' reads at a first glance like the german political party 'SPD' (or even 'PDS', a historical party name). The previous album was named 'Bunte Rapublik Deutschpunk', featuring the word 'rap' mixed into 'Republik'. And the current album's subtitle 'Angriff der Riesenohrwürmer' may be mixed from 'Angriff der Klonkrieger' (StarWars) , 'Im Land der Raketenwürmer' (A movie called 'Tremors') and 'Ohrwurm' (earwig, used for a catchy tune that one can't get out of his head).
    – dronus
    May 23, 2015 at 7:26
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    I guess someone who calls hirself optim1st will understand these wordplays :)
    – Thorsten Staerk
    May 23, 2015 at 8:00
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    Slightly off-topic comment: I see that a few people here are saying "word game", which I presume is being directly translated from "Wortspiel". This is entirely understandable but, as a native English speaker, I would call it a "play on words", or perhaps a "pun" :)
    – Christopher
    May 26, 2015 at 18:19

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