7 ms·
It's "stories" like these I would read as a kid very early 80's, probably in Popular Mechanics magazines or similar. Depicted in these magazine articles and ar
by robodale 8y ago
It's "stories" like these I would read as a kid very early 80's, probably in Popular Mechanics magazines or similar.
Depicted in these magazine articles and artist renditions: in the future (certainly by the 2020s!), we will have bases on the Moon, maybe even Mars, and rotating space stations... all the while wearing stylish futuristic fashions (yet still looking very much 70's), the women sipping from glasses of champagne and laughing to each other while in the background the men play some yet-to-be-invented handball game.
- bena 8y agoI mean, the biggest failure of prediction is that women seem to laugh at salad rather than champagne. It always seems as if we're just 50 - 100 years from "the future". Lost in Space takes place in 1997 when we were about to colonize space. Or as we know it, 21 years ago. The original Blade Runner takes place next year. When we'll have space colonies and humanoid androids to work them. And according to Star Trek, we've weathered the Eugenics War and have 31 years before World War III and the post-atomic horror. But in just 45 years, Zefram Cochrane will invent the warp drive. Not to mention the countless flying cars we'll have as we go eat all of our meals in pill form.
- brightball 8y agoThe 80s Transformers movie takes place in “It is the year 2005”
- mnw21cam 8y agoThe Flight of the Conchords' song "The Humans are Dead" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1BdQcJ2ZYY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1BdQcJ2ZYY starts with "It is the distant future, the year 2000". It was released in 2008. I mean, yeah it's a piss-take, but there was always this big thing about the year 2000 being the distant future when robots would be ruling the Earth.
- perl4ever 8y ago2000 seemed sort of like an event horizon, back in the day, until we shot past it. "Strange Days" was a film made in 1994-95, set in 1999, and yet somehow 1999 was still the far future, full of cyberpunk stuff.
- thedorkknight 8y agoOr metal gear solid. "It was the distant future, 2005..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAioZzuhOQg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAioZzuhOQg
- T4NG 8y agoI'm very curious to know why you were downvoted
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- SubiculumCode 8y agoIt may have been the comment about women laughing at salad instead of champagne, which sounds vaguely sexist....well, I do not comprehend its intent but I suspect it is some cultural reference of which I am not aware, and not actually sexist. The rest of the comment is interesting so I upvoted.
- craigsmansion 8y agoI'd venture to say you are right: GP:"the women sipping from glasses of champagne and laughing" OP:"[instead] women seem to laugh at salad rather than champagne." i.e. in actual modern life the ultimate debonaire lifestyle, as depicted by the likes of instagram, doesn't focus on smiling over exclusive alcohol as much as it does on smiling over exotic salads.
- bena 8y agoKind of, "women laughing at salad" is a very odd (possibly unintentional) category of stock photography. https://www.thehairpin.com/2011/01/women-laughing-alone-with-salad/ https://www.thehairpin.com/2011/01/women-laughing-alone-with... So when he mentioned women sipping champagne and laughing, it brought the image to my mind.
- tromboknee 8y ago"Women laughing alone with salad" is a meme. If you look through magazines targeted at women, they're full of images of a woman holding a salad in one hand and a fork in the other and laughing at something the viewer has to guess at. There's an entire blog devoted to it[0]. [0] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/women-laughing-alone-with-salad https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/women-laughing-alone-with-sal...
- dekhn 8y agoHahah yes, for years I saw these pictures (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L5_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L5_Society) and developed unrealistic expectations of human space exploration.
- eganist 8y agoI don't know if they were unrealistic so much as they didn't anticipate the cataclysmic demotivation that we as a planet incurred with the end of the cold war.
- ryandrake 8y agoMaybe they just vastly underestimated the cost of these things and overestimated the return on investment. We have the technology to build a lot of sci-fi. It’s an economic problem, not a technical one. Even if moon rocks were all made of solid gold it wouldn’t make economic sense to fly there and pick them up.
- moreira 8y agoBut it didn't make economic sense to go to the moon at all in the first place, either. That's what the parent is referring to, I think. We lost the motivation/incentives we had to get on with this exploration, with these ventures.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Razengan 8y agoFor a sentient civilization to be "successful" it has to be keep asking itself the following questions: - What are we doing to ensure our survival? - What are we doing to ensure we propagate beyond our home? - What are we doing to ensure that, in the event of an unavoidable extinction or apocalypse, the history of our existence and knowledge endures on? So far we aren't doing any of that (although #3 may be accidentally taken care of through our ruins.)
- davidivadavid 8y agoBeautiful 70s Scifi Art: http://70sscifiart.tumblr.com/ http://70sscifiart.tumblr.com/
- madza 8y agoThank you. That is a great collection and brought back some very good memories of some great stories. I have a large collection of old science fiction books (60’s and 70’s) from spending a lot of time in second hand book stores. Growing up before the internet and the explosion of the genre in the 90’s that use to be the only way to find new books or authors. The art of sci-fi book cover has certainly lost something...if only for being more pc.
- JKCalhoun 8y agoSyd Mead. And everyone else can go home. ;-)
- fpoling 8y agoIn 1990 when I was finishing school I bet with my classmate that there would be a permanent Moon base in 2010. As the result my much more practical buddy got 1500$ from his investment into sceptictical thinking.
- tzs 8y agoDid the bet specify that it would be a human base? If not, and if $1500 is enough to be worth having your school buddy think you have become an idiot or dishonorable, maybe you could have tried to argue that the secret alien outpost [1] on the far side counts and demand that your buddy pay you. I assume your friend would reject that, but unless the bet specified a procedure to use in the case that the participants could not agree on the outcome, it might have been enough to void the bet at least. Also, was the bet in writing and signed? If not, and if you are in a jurisdiction that has something like the Statue of Frauds [2], you might try to argue the bet is invalid because the Statue requires contracts that cannot be performed within one year (other than indefinite contracts) be in writing and signed. The 2010 end date on the contract arguably makes it not of indefinite duration. The "cannot be performed within one year" is harder. It doesn't mean that it has to be performed within a year--just that it is possible. For example, if I make a contract with you that says I'll pay you $1000 if in the next three years your bicycle is stolen and not recovered within two weeks. Because it is possible that your bike could be stolen in the next year, this contract can be performed in one year. It doesn't matter that it might not be. Would it be possible in 1990 for a permanent Moon base to be deployed within one year? It may have been physically possible, but it was certainly politically and economically impossible. For Statute of Fraud purposes, is it good enough that it could happen even if it would require worldwide cooperation on an unprecedented scale? Or does it have to have a non-negligible chance of actually happening? [1] https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/601628/Dark-Side-of-the-Moon-aliens-secret-Earth-space-spaceship https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/601628/Dark-Sid... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_frauds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_frauds
- pvg 8y agoif you are in a jurisdiction that has something like the Statue of Frauds [2], you might try to argue the bet is invalid At that point, you might just try more direct means of not having any friends and save yourself the hassle.
- magicnubs 8y agohttps://reddit.com/r/retrofuturism https://reddit.com/r/retrofuturism is good for these
- barking 8y agoAll the developments we've had since 1969 feel more like improvements of what was already invented. Within living memory of an (old) person alive then would have been the birth of nuclear power, powered flight, the telephone, car phones, electronic computers, radiography radio, tv, the internal combustion engine, satellites and the first men on the moon.
- rqs 8y ago> we will have bases If you change "have" to "could", then maybe it's true again, according to this video at least: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iMlOH6hdOw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iMlOH6hdOw It's quite sad to see politicians make space exploration this hard. Even more sad after you find out politicians also the source of so many wars on the Earth.