Urs' Images Part Deux

Unknown Artist

CA early 1960s

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/05/01/martian2bcity2.jpg

There's a lot to love about the heroic naivete of SciFi Pulp. WWII was over, humans had harnessed the power of the atom, Americans were full of smug assurance that we were the "Good Guys" and the universe would open to us, complete with all the comforts of home plus new delights to be discovered. Sure, there might be rough patches here and there, but only enough to make things interesting, opportunities to prove virility.

Here we have ideal suburban living, complete with a garage, covered entry, satellite TV and hot servile female.

Moon Base

1970's BBC series, UFO

A classic from the era of Space 1999 and Buck Rogers. The Apollo mission was still fresh in peoples' minds, and they had images with eerie lighting and space-grit-covered once-white ships, battered from the intense heat of re-entry to take the gloss off of the technocolor dreams of 1950s pulp. This modular set design feels more real to me than the CGI perfection of popular images such as the Halo game series.

Cover Art, Season 3 Lost in Space DVD

Space Travel in the throes of the Sexual Revolution, or Women Can Wear Short Skirts While They Make The Goddamn Coffee. See also: Star Trek, the original series.

Suburbs 2100

Dawid Michalczyk

http://www.art.eonworks.com/gallery/sci-fi/sci-fi_city-199805.html

This is interesting, and kind of quaint in the same way that Lost In Space is quaint. Sure, it's futuristic and all, but if we can make flying cars, why would we clutter our skylines with wires and flying petrol stations? I think it conveys the dystopian bleakness of what we expect to come from commercial enterprise. As in, extraterrestrial colonization is most likely to happen when there's financial incentive to make it happen. Like European expansion into the Americas, resources and commerce was the driving force. People pioneered in order to grab land and opportunities before others did.

The downside of this type of pioneering is, the work and railroad towns that sprung up as a result of enterprise weren't artful or lovely. They were functional and dangerous. Everyone was there to make a buck. I think this image conveys that fear pretty well.