Replace these “wireless telegraphs” with smartphones, update the dress a little, and this vision from a 1906 issue of Punch magazine could easily be for 110 years in the future. Part of a series of “forecasts” for the year to come, the caption reads: “These two figures are not communicating with one another. The lady […]
A print from around 1882 depicting a futuristic view of air travel over Paris as people leave the opera. Many types of aircraft are shown including flying buses, limousines and, what are presumably, police vehicles. On the latter are mounted strangely un-futuristic sword-carrying officers that wouldn’t seem out of place on the Opera’s stage itself. […]
Desperate, tender, doomed—Beksinski’s couple are heartbreaking. Untitled In one of the most directly affecting pieces on this list, Zdizslaw Beksinski presents the charred and skeletal forms of a couple clinging to one another in the aftermath of some disaster. The red and orange palette suggests some form of fiery destruction, whether nuclear or solar, and […]
A New York artist has been combining his love for staples and Star Wars to create stunningly intricate works of art. 40-year-old James Haggerty makes pictures of iconic Star Wars characters using tens of thousands of multi colored staples in organized patterns. Some of his most notable works are Darth Vader (made from 10,496 staples), […]
What is it about science and the future and how the science fiction of the past (pre-1950s) almost never could encapsulate the superior scientific innovation and discovery of its near future? And, like most science fiction at that time they considered that our threats would come from outer space. I guess that’s why I like […]
by Brian Handwerk, smithsonian.com Science fiction pioneer H.G. Wells conjured some futuristic visions that haven’t (yet) come true: a machine that travels back in time, a man who turns invisible, and a Martian invasion that destroys southern England. But for a man born 150 years ago, many of Wells’s other predictions about the modern world […]
Photograph: George Orwell at work on his trusty old typewriter. (Public Domain). The effect of Nineteen Eighty-Four on our cultural and linguistic landscape has not been limited to either the film adaptation starring John Hurt and Richard Burton, with its Nazi-esque rallies and chilling soundtrack, nor the earlier one with Michael Redgrave and Edmond O’Brien. […]
George Orwell. Photograph: Public Domain by Robert McCrum “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” Seventy years after the publication of Orwell’s masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty-Four, that crystal first line sounds as natural and compelling as ever. But when you see the original manuscript, you find something else: not […]
Portmagee, Ireland John O’Dwyer, a member of the costuming club 501st Legion Garrison Ireland, dressed as Darth Vader, looks out towards Skellig. The small County Kerry fishing village of Portmagee hosted the Star Wars festival for the second year running. Image Credit: Photograph by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images Source: The 20 photographs of the week | […]
A daguerrotype of Poe made several months before his death in 1849. Posted By Eliza Strickland. During the waning months of 1847, Edgar Allan Poe sat at his desk with a tortoiseshell cat draped around his shoulders and dreamed the universe into being. Poe believed the book he wrote in that feline-festooned state to be […]
