io9: Retro-futurism

Why doesn't anybody use social media on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine?

Catherynne M. Valente — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 13:04:22 PST

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Like many people, I've been slowly rewatching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ever since it popped up on Netflix. And one thing becomes clear: in many ways, 2012 has already overtaken DS9 as The Future goes — barring, of course, space travel and replicators. Culturally, at least, we've zoomed right past Star Trek's version of the 24th century, by the second decade of the 21st. More »

It's Time to Rethink Steampunk

Jess Nevins — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:14:43 PST

Once upon a time, not so long ago, everybody agreed what the label "steampunk" referred to. But now the term is being used to refer to all sorts of entertainments, from future history to adventures on other planets. Is it time to rethink what steampunk means? More »

The Massive Ultra-bright Street Lights that Could Never Be Turned Off

Esther Inglis-Arkell — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:36:00 PST

When electric power was in its infancy, there was a debate on how exactly to light up a city. Today we have settled on streetlights lining the sidewalks, but once upon a time, they had giant towers that re-created the moon. More »

Isaac Asimov weighs in with enduring insights on science, faith, and the future

Robert T. Gonzalez — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 13:00:32 PST

You're watching a brief but compelling excerpt from an interview with SF-giant Isaac Asimov. Originally aired in 1988, the conversation touches on such topics as the future of creativity in education, the necessity for scientific inquiry, and the vilification of intellectualism. It is absolutely incredible how many of the interview's topics, and Asimov's points, are as relevant today as they were 24 years ago. More »

A Beautiful Look at the 1962 Seattle World's Fair, When The Future Was Magical

Charlie Jane Anders — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 16:00:00 PST

If there was a high point for Space Age excitement about all things futuristic and shiny, it might well have been the 1962 Seattle World's Fair, at which we would be promised such great things as the Bubbleator Time Machine. Women dressed in skimpy outer space outfits posed in the Girls of the Galaxy revue, a monorail shook Seattle, and Washington State's blue laws were repealed. More »

Dropping 1000 feet inside a giant bullet = the most bad-ass amusement park ride that never was

Cyriaque Lamar — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 09:30:00 PST

I imagine amusement park safety was lax in the 19th century, but this is ridiculous. An 1891 issue of Scientific American showcased this invention by a one Monsieur Carron of Grenoble, France. You know something's a bad idea when it makes the notorious Action Park look tame. More »

The planets of the Solar System, according to crazed pulp comics of the 1940s

Cyriaque Lamar — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 07:30:00 PST

Back in the Forties, the science fiction rag Planet Comics published the ongoing feature "Life On Other Worlds." This section peppered scientific know-how amongst whatever gonzo shit the writer happened to make up. Here's a tour of our Solar System using old issues of Planet Comics. Did you know that Mars is occupied by gargantuan Romans?

Hilariously optimistic 1954 magazine article proclaimed we'd all be piloting flying saucers by 1965

Cyriaque Lamar — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 06:45:00 PDT

In a 1954 issue of Mechanix Illustrated, the magazine ran a wonderfully rosy piece titled "FLYING SAUCERS FOR EVERYBODY!" This short piece detailed how flying saucers would ameliorate arduous commutes in the far-out year of 1965. More »

During World War I, France began building a fake Paris to confuse German bombers

Cyriaque Lamar — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 11:30:30 PDT

Just prior to the end of World War I, French officials began constructing a Potemkin Paris outside of the real city to throw off German bombing raids. This tactic may seem unusual, but aerial bombing technology was still a bit of a novelty in 1917. Planes couldn't support massive payloads, and pilots didn't have the luxury of fancy navigational technology. This faux Paris was never finished, but as you can see the fake city's layout in this article from a 1920 issue of The Illustrated London News. More »

Cool documentary trailer asks, "What can steampunk teach us about the future?"

Charlie Jane Anders — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 08:30:00 PDT

Check out the first trailer for Vintage Tomorrows, a forthcoming documentary about the steampunk movement. Authors, including Cherie Priest and Cory Doctorow, join enthusiasts to explain just why people are so excited about this one strand of retro-futurism. More »

1950s PSA helps demolish the myth of "Z-Rays"

Robert T. Gonzalez — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 13:57:35 PDT

Snake oil salesmen are as old as time itself — but so too are their detractors. Check out this 1950's public service announcement from the US Food and Drug Administration; Raymond Massey's message is as relevant today as it was over half a century ago. More »

1960s futurists predicted we'd have super-intelligent ape chauffeurs by 2020

Matt Novak - Paleofuture Blog — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 08:00:00 PDT

Before it became a magazine, The Futurist was launched as a newsletter in 1967. The second issue was released in April of that year and is filled with some amazing predictions of yestermorrow. The "cover story," if you will, is by Glenn T. Seaborg (the dude who discovered plutonium in 1941) and is titled "Women and the Year 2000." More »

Incredible CGI demo from the late 1980s shows earliest efforts to represent animal motion realistically

Robert T. Gonzalez — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 17:00:23 PDT

Remember DARPA's Big Dog? Looks like this video could have inspired its design. The clip shows a composition of some animal motion studies (along with some killer dance moves) prepared for the 1989 CG short "Eurythmy" by Ohio State University's Computer Graphics Research Group. More »

In the Hospital of the Future, babies were kept in plastic drawers

Cyriaque Lamar — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 14:55:00 PDT

In the 1950s, Kaiser Permanente founders Henry Kaiser and Sidney Garfield unveiled their model for the Hospital of the Future. The most entertaining innovation was the baby cabinet, where new mothers could find their children stored like pairs of freshly folded socks. More »

That time Penthouse published a science fiction issue

Matt Novak - Paleofuture Blog — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 13:30:00 PDT

Readers of Penthouse magazine were treated to a special "Science and the Future" issue in October of 1978, which acted as a sort of coming out party for OMNI magazine. OMNI, "a magazine of science, science fiction and the future," was launched in October, 1978 by Kathy Keeton, the future wife of Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione. More »

In this 1995 MTV News report, Newt Gingrich defends internet porn

Cyriaque Lamar — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 08:30:00 PDT

We've seen pundits on The Today Show be perplexed by that wacky world wide web fad — now check out Coolio weigh in on the CB radio of the future! Listen to that soundtrack! Better than Ezra! And at last, a twirling image of R2-D2! More »

Clarissa Explains It All prophesied the movie Cowboys & Aliens

Cyriaque Lamar — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 07:15:00 PDT

Way back in the early 1990s, before Cowboys & Aliens was a graphic novel/film pitch, Clarissa Explains It All predicted the existence of the film in a throwaway line courtesy of Clarissa's dorky brother Ferguson. Now we know where Hollywood gets its ideas — trawling Nickelodeon teen sitcoms. More »

Meet the ODEX, the creepiest insectbot of the 1980s

Cyriaque Lamar — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 17:15:00 PDT

Robotic conveyances like the BigDog attest to the advances that biomimetic beings have made in recent years. But the walking machines of today lack that sinister je ne sais quoi of old-school robots, namely Odetics' ODEX series of insectoid walkers. More »

A brief history of the pneumatic tube transport systems that never were

Jennifer Ouellette - Cocktail Party Physics — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 15:00:00 PDT

Imagine, if you will, a secret community dwelling beneath the streets of New York City, its inhabitants never allowed to travel to the surface or to interact in any way with the dreaded "Topsiders." That's the premise of an award-winning 1999 YA novel by Neal Shusterman called Downsiders, exploring what happens when a 14-year-old Downsider named Talon defies the prohibition and ends up falling in love with a Topsider named Lindsay. Together, they uncover the mysterious origins of the Downsiders: a forgotten inventor named Alfred Ely Beach who created the array of tunnels over a century ago. More »

1970s NASA film predicted we'd colonize space before the year 2000

Cyriaque Lamar — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 08:00:00 PDT

I can appreciate the cockeyed optimism in this NASA reel, which had us mining the moon to build space settlements. Also, our space colony future will sound like the opening 10 seconds of "Separate Ways" by Journey! More »

Letters to the Year 2076 (from high schoolers in the Year 1976)

Matt Novak - Paleofuture Blog — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 14:25:58 PDT

The 1970s was a tough decade for America. As we saw in the second episode of paleofuture.tv, many people were predicting apocalypse. More »

Miss Honeywell, the 1960s "robotic" housewife that sold blenders

Matt Novak - Paleofuture Blog — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 10:30:00 PDT

Every new promise of futuristic technology brings with it the hucksters, the swindlers, and the merely confused. More »

More scenes from Taiwan's cursed retrofuturistic resort that never was

Lauren Davis — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 12:30:00 PDT

The UFO-shaped pods in Taipei's Sanzhi District were constructed as a resort for military officers stationed in East Asia. But a series of accidents ended construction — and started rumors that the site was cursed. More »

Jetpack mailmen: yet another way the future let us down

Matt Novak - Paleofuture Blog — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 10:00:00 PDT

I had to buy stamps recently. It was the worst. More »

Watch a rad 1980s video of an experimental walking machine

Cyriaque Lamar — Sun, 22 May 2011 14:00:00 PDT

This is Ohio State University's Adaptive Suspension Vehicle, an legged conveyance designed to conquer any terrain. This 1984 demo reel is all sorts of awesome. If I were an investor, the soundtrack's synthesizer stings would've sold me in a heartbeat. More »

Who wants to go for a ride in a flying sailcar?

Cyriaque Lamar — Tue, 03 May 2011 13:15:00 PDT

In the August 1929 issue of Modern Mechanics John Demenjoz of Bridgeport, Connecticut regaled reader with plans for his incredible flying sailplane. More »

Aerial mine fields = a great bad idea that never happened

Cyriaque Lamar — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 09:30:00 PDT

In this diagram from a 1937 issue of Popular Science, the magazine pitched the idea of defensive aerial mind fields, filled with daintily parachuting explosives that would float down to earth for Lord knows who to clean up. More »

Meet General Electric's Walking Truck, a real-life Imperial walker

Cyriaque Lamar — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 16:35:25 PDT

In the 1960s, General Electric and Ralph Mosher built a 3000-pound, quadruped robot dubbed "the Walking Truck." Although the Walking Truck never caught on, you can still check out fantastic footage of this four-legged supply vehicle in motion. More »

The never-was 1000 MPH transcontinental railroad from New York to Los Angeles

Cyriaque Lamar — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 09:30:00 PDT

Here's another speculative transit project right up there with that underground bullet train between New York and Philly. In 1948, Modern Mechanics showcased this supersonic cross-continental rocket train. You could go from NYC to LA in three hours! More »

Footage of Alpha the Robot, the would-be mechanical assassin of the 1930s

Matt Novak - Paleofuture Blog — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 09:00:00 PDT

You may have heard of Alpha the (trigger-happy) Robot and that time he posed with a group of nudists (NSFW), but have you ever seen this mechanical man move? Matt Novak of the Paleofuture Blog shows us Alpha in motion. More »

According to 1940s automobile futurists, we should be driving land airplanes

Cyriaque Lamar — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 13:30:06 PST

This quirky movie from the 1940s showcases such strange automobiles as the Davis Three-Wheeler. More »

In the future, we'll undergo tests to avoid marrying frigid hubbies and tricky lesbians

Cyriaque Lamar — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 19:51:14 PST

Hugo Gernsback is famous for being a science fiction publishing titan, being the namesake of the Hugo Awards, and his no-holds-barred futurism. He was less renowned for his Clockwork Orange-style views on marriage, which are equal parts horrifying and gut-busting. More »

In the 1950s, Ford Motor's vice-president pushed for a flying car

Matt Novak - Paleo-Future Blog — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 08:00:00 PST

In 1958, you'd find no greater advocate for the hovercar than Ford vice president Andrew A. Kucher. More »

Scenes from the Soviet Union's Martian colony, circa 2061

Lauren Davis — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 10:30:03 PST

The Soviet Union may be a thing of the past, but it still inhabits many an alternate future. A group of artists entered their futuristic visions for a Soviet Republic in "CCCP-2061," which envisions a USSR that has colonized Mars. More »

In 1926, Tesla predicted the portable TV

Matt Novak -- Paleo-Future Blog — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 12:30:00 PST

In 1926 Nicola Tesla gave an interview to Collier's Weekly in which he predicted something that sounds remarkably like portable television. Perhaps most interestingly, he mentions that this technology would be used to watch war unfold, "just as though we were present." More »

“Tozo” is a Tintin-inspired retrofuturistic murder mystery

Lauren Davis — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 11:00:00 PST

The webcomic Tozo: The Public Servant takes Hergé's visual style and transports it to a retrofuturistic universe where a murdered bureaucrat draws an earnest public servant-and his robot companion-into a web of political and religious conspiracies. More »

Old news article predicted that wings would replace the automobile and stairs

Cyriaque Lamar — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 17:30:00 PST

Or so said Dr. Lucien Bull of the Marie Institute at Paris, as cited in this 1929 issue of Modern Mechanics. And you know what? I'm with him. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't mind living in Hawkworld. [Spotted on Modern Mechanix] More »

Meet the Land Battleship, the biggest $#@?! tank that never existed

Cyriaque Lamar — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 16:15:33 PST

This absurdly oversized vehicle is the Land Battleship, a juggernaut that supposedly ran over Nazis in World War II. This 1941 illustration from Mechanix Illustrated is, as commenters over at Modern Mechanix astutely point out, an artistic embellishment of real Soviet tanks such as the KV. From now on, I'm just going to refer to all tanks as "land battleships." I already call planes "aero-sedans," so it won't be that difficult. More »

According to the Montreal Gazette, Canada would be a drugged-up dystopia by 2000 AD

Matt Novak -- Paleo-Future Blog — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 14:00:58 PST

Remember back in the year 2000 when you'd feed your brat kids their breakfast pellets, head to work under the city's weather controlled dome, your computer overlords only knew you by your nine digit identification number, and you'd end your day fantasizing about a life before computers? More »

A description of online shopping, circa 1981

Matt Novak -- Paleo-Future Blog — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 08:00:00 PST

I'm often shocked at how accurate some 20th century predictions of online shopping were. However, these retail prognosticators frequently miss the mark by assuming that individual goods would need to be photographed or videotaped live for consumers. More »