Tag Archives: The Future

Early Science Fiction in the “Age of Discovery.”

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Portrait of Margaret Cavendish in the frontispiece to her Grounds of Natural Philosophy (1668).
The image is also used as frontispiece to some editions of The Blazing World — Source.
It is the middle of the seventeenth century and a Bear-man is helping an empress attempt to examine a whale through a microscope. After this task is found to be impossible, a group of Worm-men explain how creatures can exist without blood and how cheese turns to maggots.
In her turn, the empress scolds an assembly of Ape- and Lice-men for their pursuit of tedious and irrelevant knowledge, such as the true weight of air, and commands they instead get busy with “such Experiments as may be beneficial to the publick”.
Armed with such knowledge of the natural world and equipped with the resources of her vast dominions, she then sends flocks of Bird-men and navies of Fish-men to a parallel planet to make war on and conquer her many enemies.
Such are the links between life, learning, and power within The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World, a piece of prose fiction published in 1666 by the “Thrice Noble, Illustrious, and Excellent Princesse the Duchess of Newcastle”, better known as Margaret Lucas Cavendish.
The narrative blends utopian fiction, imperialist travelogue, and natural history to tell the story of a “young Lady” who is kidnapped from her homeland but soon escapes to a new and mysterious land filled with human-animal hybrids.
On arrival she is made empress and quickly establishes societies of natural philosophy, funds theater and the arts, and destroys her enemies with fire and fury.The plot is often convoluted, with descriptions of military invasion or discussions with fantastical chimeras interspaced with short lessons on lenses or lectures on the nature of solar eclipses.

Yet there is much that can be learned from Cavendish’s Blazing World, including the way it sheds historical and literary light on conceptions of gender, natural philosophy, political theory, theology, and the life of the author herself in seventeenth-century Europe. For example, in the emphasis on the stability of a realm in which everyone —- from the lowest Flea-man to the highest Emperor —- knows and respects their place in the natural hierarchy, we can see echoed Cavendish’s Royalist sympathies.
Histories of feminism have also mined Cavendish’s works, as they reveal the ways in which she saw her own position limited within a society shaped by both gender and class.
However, less examined is the way that the narrative illuminates the history of seventeenth-century European imperialism, and how ideas about power, race, and conquest related to those of gender and knowledge.
Continue on via Source: Mistress of a New World: Early Science Fiction in Europe’s “Age of Discovery” – The Public Domain Review

Dystopian Worlds by Alex Andreev.

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Trying to categorize or summarize the genre of Alex Andreev’s digital paintings is nearly impossible.
Part science fiction, part dystopian future, the scenes are equally disturbing and beautiful, his characters inhabiting a world Andreev tells me is deeply influenced by Soviet-era literature, music and movies.
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via Paintings of Dystopian Worlds by Alex Andreev.

Star Wars Masks from the 1800s.

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More than 30 years ago, my wife, Helene, and I started collecting. She loved tribal masks—African, Oceanic, Indonesian, etc.—while I focused on medical, scientific, and industrial artifacts.
“George Lucas’s designers must have found inspiration in these smoke helmets.”
I’ve spent my career as a creative director, painter, and sculptor, so I always approached collecting as an artist. Over the years, without even realizing it, our collections began to influence each other until they merged into their own unique specialty.
We now think of this new genre as industrial tribal art. Whether it’s medical teaching mannequins and headgear, early smoke rescue helmets, or industrial masks, when properly displayed, these objects have the visual presence of tribal masks.
This pair of early rescue masks, shown above, dates from between the mid-1800s and World War I. They look a bit familiar, right?
Almost 100 years before Darth Vader and C-3PO hit the big screen in “Star Wars” in 1977, these two smoke helmets were worn by firefighters carrying out rescues in smoke-logged buildings.
The buzz among collectors is that George Lucas’s designers must have found inspiration in these smoke helmets and others like them. In fact, one well-known 19th-century manufacturer was named Vajen-Bader—you could easily get the name Vader from that.
The black leather helmet on the left is labeled “Respirations Apparat” by “G.B.Konic Altona,” was made in Hamburg, Germany, and has the look of an African Dan mask.
The brass, three-quarter face mask to its right was made in Paris by J. Mandet. This type of breathing mask had a very simple apparatus, allowing only a short range of operation. When used, air would be forced into the helmet through no more than 13 meters of flexible tubing by means of a bellows operated remotely from the outside.
Both of these masks have mica lenses to help protect the eyes from heat.
via Before Steampunk: Star Wars’ 1800s Roots | Collectors Weekly.

1939 Prediction: The Bearded Man of the 21st Century.

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lnkoyz4evktvimktg9edThe February 1, 1939 issue of Vogue ran this photo of the 21st Century man.
The caption appears below.
The picture can also be found in the book Exit to Tomorrow: World’s Fair Architecture, Design, Fashion 1933-2005.
Gilbert Rhode banishes buttons, pockets, collars, ties.
The man of the next century will revolt against shaving and wear a beautiful beard, says the designer of boilers, pianos, clocks and metal furniture.
His hat will be an an antennae – snatching radio out of the ether. His socks disposable, his suit minus tie collar and buttons.
via Bearded Men of the 21st Century (1939).

Circular Runways designed to catapult planes Skywards.

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The January 10, 1960 edition of Arthur Radebaugh’s Sunday comic “Closer Than We Think” includes a curious invention that was supposed to literally catapult us into the Jet Age:
The circular runway.
From the Chicago Tribune:
The heart of tomorrow’s airfield may be a circular catapult-like mechanism for sending planes into the air. It would mean runways much smaller than those now required.
For military purposes, American Engineering Company has already designed a giant wheel that is turned with great force by jet power. Cables from this wheel serve as catapults for fighting aircraft.
The next step would be to use rocket power to catapult planes from a dish-shaped concrete wheel. One spin on such a “circle runway” would produce the same starting speed that now requires a thousand feet or more of conventional runway, and with much less fuel.
The Navy actually tested a similar circular runway concept in 1965. The big difference between the Navy’s tests and the runway envisioned by Radebaugh? The Navy’s was much, much larger and didn’t have that sci-fi “rocket power unit” to propel the plane.
According to the New York Times, the Navy pilots who tested their makeshift runway found that take-off and landing was “surprisingly easy.”
Landing is accomplished by approaching the runway in a 15 degree bank — that is, the wing facing the center of the circle is lowered 15 degrees from the horizontal. Once touchdown is accomplished, the runway seems to take care of the rest.
The plane finds its natural line on the runway, depending on its speed.
Read on via These Circular Runways Were Designed To Catapult Planes Skyward.