Filed under: future history, history, science fiction | Tags: retrofuturism, technology and youth, ussr
anyways here’s a link for now: more TECHNOLOGY FOR YOUTH magazine covers!
Filed under: science fiction, teevee | Tags: bad sf, lost, stephen lang, terra nova, waaalt, we have to go back in time
being a brief review of Terra Nova
Filed under: future history, history, science fiction | Tags: a space-age tale, andromeda, Техник молодежи, ifan efremov, soviet science fiction, technical youth
Техник молодежи from 1962.
A cover for Technical Youth magazine! If I had to guess, it’s the same artist who did the cover for the English-language edition of Efremov’s post-Stalin ur-SF Andromeda:
Andromeda, as published in George Hanna's translation for Foreign Language Publishing House, 1959. Pretty dull caption, huh?
Filed under: history, paperback club, science fiction | Tags: mystery of the flying discs, remember that time krycek got infected with the black oil that was cool huh, russian, the x-files, ufology!, unreadable, ussr
Flying saucer fever, it would seem, hit the USSR too:
Mystery of the Flying Discs (1960), which are (apparently) showing up hovering over Moscow. Note the similarity to the classic "I Want to Believe"/Passaic streetlamp UFO!
Unfortunately, while I own this, I can’t actually read Russian well enough to tell you what’s going on in it.
Filed under: future history, paperback club, recent acquisitions, science fiction | Tags: arthur c. clarke, childhood's end, paperback books, pulp sci-fi, undeniably cool
Okay, so I have started picking up a lot of good paperbacks since I started working at a used bookstore. Case in point:
Ah, the famous EPCOT-drink mixer-psychedelic explosion sequence - who could ever forget?
I mean, obviously it’s showing its wear and tear, but as a piece of art it’s pretty undeniably cool, even now.
So for a little bit I’m going to post up the best ones I’ve found at a decent enough quality and maybe offer up a few thoughts on what makes them so good or, at least, what makes them so noteworthily of their time.
Filed under: future history, recent acquisitions, science fiction | Tags: arthur c. clarke, future history, islands in the sky, kids these days, man will conquer space soon!, outdated technology, remembering the future, werner von braun
This eluded me for years, what it was called. It wasn’t this edition, though, but a library edition of the original hardback with the blue cover – on the lower left.
The part I remembered best was the part where they fly around the space station on giant pogo sticks. And where they meet old people who grow huge in space. One of those is an exaggeration, but which? Also I really don't think it was dangerous at all. I mean, they sent a kid up there for a quiz-show prize.
Thanks, parochial school library’s lack of attention to weeding! You made me what I am today, kinda.
Filed under: future history, science fiction | Tags: disco-totalitarian, holler, wikipedia adventures
but it does have this:
ZootFly’s first development was Hollow. The game was never published. In Hollow, players would assume the role of an expelled US journalist named Tyler Kilmore, who, upon returning to the disco-totalitarian state of Centrope reunites with his fiancée and finds himself being arrested for her murder. The game would feature four distinct environments, ranging from a disco-totalitarian metropolis to a decaying underworld. Intriguingly, each mission in the game would end with a movie-style action sequence showing the player’s best moments.
Holy moly!
Filed under: future history, science fiction, teevee, the fringe files | Tags: fringe, post-war new world order, strange maps
Look! Way in the back, behind John Noble's wig! There it is!
So, Fringe was actually good for once this week so I’ll cover that later but for now! Look! It’s the Post-War New World Order Map (even bigger for your desktop wallpaper needs here)! I’m not sure why it pops up so often (it was in that Jonny Quest documentary, too) but my guess would be either 1) it looks official and secret, since it’s a bit like real life but not really 2) it’s free 3) there’s high-quality scans online and set dressers need some junk to fill space.
Still, weird that they’re using an alternate-reality map to document the alternate reality that’s supposed to be our reality except everything was invented by Leonard Nimoy as a surrogate for the messy process of the creation of new technology (just like Edison in For Want of a Nail) and also you can travel through dimensions and people turn into scorpions occasionally. (In a show which, itself, is pretty obsessed with counterfactuality – Walter and Peter, the World Trade Center reveal, “President Kennedy,” some of the Olivia/dead agent boyfriend stuff S1 was getting into near the midpoint) That is, a reality to which the alternate-reality map is, presumably, an alternate. Sheesh.
Also, let’s take time to note Fringe’s new 1985 intro look – while the alternate intro has a long and atrocious history of denoting parallel universes in SF teevee over the past decade (‘sup, mirror universe episodes of Enterprise*) this is actually pretty decent at capturing/pointing out the somewhat goofy nature of the Fringe opening credits, along with its more obvious homages to the credits from The X-Files. Plus it sorta looks like a cross between Look Around You and the Dharma initiation films from Lost, which is always nice.
*of course, this implies I thought the legitimate intros to Enterprise were good, which, well, who the heck would ever say that in the history of the world?
Filed under: teevee, the fringe files | Tags: electromagnets!, fringe, home, humbug, johari window, Science!, the post-modern prometheus, the x-files
Real Fringe is back! But just back to monster-of-the-week episodes, unfortunately. This time, it’s a (nonsensical) calque of “The Post-Modern Prometheus,” more or less. And, in the end, to “Humbug.” There’s been references to it being closer to “Home,” but in the end it’s not close to being nearly as good as any of those episodes of The X-Files.
Like the inexplicable unaired episode they put up earlier in the week, the episode’s desire to semi-logically explain what’s happening is easily its weakest point. Because when you think about a magical electromagnet generator that turns freakish mutants into normal-looking people (and moths), the first thing you need to do is explain how it works. If they’d stuck to Walter’s semi-explanation and made it a town where when you crossed the city limits you went blind that would have made this a much more dramatic episode. Instead, you get Astrid getting mad at Walter because he brought back an ugly moth (she hates moths, but loves butterflies? unexplained exposition alert!) and, seriously, a machine that camouflages just people’s deformities. That was so stupid it’s hard to get over it.
People spend a lot more time screaming at horrible deformities in this episode than they ever did in “Post-Modern Prometheus” or “Humbug,” or even “Home.” We get it! They’re ugly. But when The X-Files managed to be nicer to its mutants than you… Well, let’s put it this way – there’s no dance party with a Cher impersonator at the end of this one, just Walter talking about how brave it was for one of the freaks to be willing to be seen as a freak instead of just murdering a bunch of people. It’s an oddly deterministic view of things for Fringe, the monster-or-cute-person divide, and not really one that fits into the bigger view of the show’s hidden identities motif.
Anyways, Peter shoots a guy (how hasn’t he shot somebody before now yet?) and is sad but not as sad as Special Agent Olivia Dunham was when she killed Charlie so I guess we don’t need to meet the Lebowski-shrink this week. This was a bland monster-of-the-week episode and, frankly, they need to get back to the mytharc ASAP.
