According to the LA Times in 1923, it took streetcars 30 minutes to move just six blocks in downtown LA that summer. The automobile had invaded the city, and the streetcars were owned by private companies that didn’t want to spend any money on improvements. The dream? Elevating mass transit, like in the 1923 model…
Commercial photographer Mirko Nahmijas has been taking photos of the mid-20th century Brutalist architecture in Belgrade, Serbia. And these buildings look like long-abandoned crashed spaceships or relics from a forgotten future.
David Bowie wasn’t the only icon we lost in the past few days. André Courrèges, the indelible Parisian fashion designer who helped to define the Space Age, also died late last week. Courrèges’ designs formed a huge part of what we think of as “futuristic” sixties fashion, and our ideas of what people would wear in…
The 1939 World’s Fair was an incredible event that showcased the ‘World of Tomorrow’. Now, director Amanda Murray has brought the event to life with a new documentary.
Electric airships, submarines, and other futuristic vessels were the main attractions on the covers of a pulp novel series called Frank Reade Weekly Magazine: Containing Stories of Adventures on Land, Sea & in the Air.
Back in 1966, we’d barely taken our first spacewalks. But already, one attorney was thinking ahead.
Lots of movies have a wonderful first half, followed by a blah second half. Setup is often easier than follow-through. But Tomorrowland, out today, might become the clearest example of this syndrome. And the reason Tomorrowland falls apart halfway through is because it sinks into Baby Boomer angst. Spoilers ahead...
The jetpack is so closely associated with the dream of a thrilling future, you only have to ask “Where’s my jetpack?” and everybody knows what you mean. Jetpacks appeared in thousands of science fiction stories, but in the 1960s they made the leap to reality. Here are some videos of real-life in jetpacks in action,…
User interfaces have come a long way in the past 30 years. Not just because graphics and touchscreens have improved — we also know a lot more about how to make a system feel intuitive. Just check out some videos that show how the most popular sites and apps would've looked decades ago.
The Space Age gave us some beautiful, rocket-shaped visions of future cities. But before World War II, people were already imagining sleek, beautiful structures. And floating airports. And air taxis. And Futurama, circa 1939! These are the most eye-popping videos of life in the future, from the 1920s and 1930s.
What if there was a blogger tackling the history of science fiction at the end of the Golden Age, as it happened? It would look a lot like the Galactic Journey blog, over on Dreamwidth.
When it comes to motor vehicles, history is filled with curious also-rans. If the inventors of these contraptions had had their ways, our streets might be filled with single-wheeled cars, gas-fueled chariots, and armor-plated snowmobiles.
If you're looking for a badass, retrofuturistic space heroine to brighten your afternoon, look no further. Short film Over the Moon is about the first woman who walked on the moon, her robot companion, and their attempt to prevent the 1969 moon landing.
The year is 1900 and Georges and Madeleine are trying to get a gig showing off the wonders of life in the year 2000, complete with gadget that we would think of today as retrofuturistic. But it's when they debut their time machine on the stage that things start getting goofy.
These ads made for the Detroit-based Bohn Aluminum and Brass Corporation were largely dreamed up by legendary illustrator Arthur Radebaugh during the 1940s. Radebaugh's utopian visions and Bohn's desire to appear as a forward-looking company combine for a slick retrofuturistic view of transportation.
It's 2015. But sometimes it feels like our futuristic dreams are stuck in the 1950s and 60s. And there's actually a good reason for that.
Vintage interviews of Arthur C. Clarke predicting the future of computing continue to surface. Here's one from 1976, just released by the AT&T Tech Channel, which contains even more spot-on description of what communications will look like in the future. As in, today. As in, internet and smartphones and maybe even…
We're still not entirely sure what's going on in Brad Bird's upcoming film Tomorrowland, but we are excited to spend time in the shimmering city that the movie is teasing, one packed with futuristic vehicles, inviting public spaces, and skyscrapers from a forgotten version of the future.
They had talked about it for so long, what they would do on the space station, how they would decorate their quarters, the famous view out of airlock 75, that she could swear she remembered Liana standing there in front of the airlock window. Then she would shake her head and realize Liana never did leave Earth.
In the first half of the 20th century, artists came up with gorgeous designs for New York City, Columbus, Houston, and other American cities, imagining them as havens of efficient transportation, dense urban living, and space age architecture.
