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Rare Soviet Retro-Future Space Art
abramsv writes "A collection of the most inspiring and hard-to-find retro-futuristic graphics from rather unlikely sources: Soviet & Eastern Bloc 'popular tech & science' magazines, German, Italian, British fantastic illustrations and promotional literature — all from the Golden Age of Retro-Future (1930s to 1970s)."
A collection of the most inspiring and hard-to-find retro-futuristic graphics from rather unlikely sources: Soviet & Eastern Bloc 'popular tech & science' magazines
In Soviet Russia, future finds you!
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Ok, Dawson, it's late; but can't you put a verb in there someplace?
What "rare"? This looks like clones of old science fiction magazine Analog/Astounding covers.
CrispinThe Russians were planning to shoot their own moon landing all along! We just beat them to it! http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2160/2061439676_b4ffcf2dde_o.jpg
Why "unlikely sources"?! The Russians were the first in space after all.
Those images are sad. It's so easy to imagine the future, and so hard to reach it...
It's depressing to think we'll be long dead before humanity finally understands the universe.
Space travel, immortality, living in far planets, knowing the origin and the end of all, and, most of all, contacting an alien intelligence and culture if there is one.
However, I do feel lucky for living in an era of enlightenment and fast technological evolution. A mere two or three centuries in the past, I'd have seen the same advance in all my life as I can in a modern decade.
Good catch, but I actually think it took more work not to include a verb in his description.
What happened to mankind's fascination with space? These pictures are awesome to me not because of their scientific validity, but because they are a reflection of the way that mankind used to dream of the stars.
While great sci-fi is by no means limited to a distant past(thank you gaiman, stephenson, etc...), it is seems that space travel just isn't that romanticized in today's cultures. Have we stopped dreaming of an extraordinary not-so-distant future?
All things are subject to interpretation, whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and n
Why the hell has no one made even the most rudimentary moon base yet? Damnit I want to see people living on another celestial body before I die.
You mad
Why does the picture which most prominently displays Earth show the American continents, instead of Europe or Asia?
Did anyone else notice that the only image with a view of Earth still featured the Americas, instead of Mother Russia?
You never expect irony, do you?
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In http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1128/1058108337_46491e437c_o.jpg, they show North and South America. I would have guessed them showing Eurasia.
where did my sig go? where's my sig at?
I have to admit, although U.S.S.R. and so called "Bolshevism" has written lot of dark pages in history while building "Communism", those dreams about future when humanity together working to defeat universe at least in subjective scale, expressed in these pictures and stories from Stanisaw Lem and other soviet sci-fi writers are which I am more found of. Yes, western sci-fi usually spells more doom and gloom, power of coorporations, profit over science and discovery, etc. Both "schools" have beatiful exceptions, like Lem sci-fi fairy tales or "I, Robot" series by Isaac Asimov. When I think of sci-fi, I usually think of "The Magellanic Cloud". This novel from then-young Lem is something I still fill very exceptional. In Soviet times it was published in so called "Winning Communism edition", but after collapse of Eastern Block it was published in non-tweaked edition, as Lem said first edition was too rosy about communism. What I like about it is that even in old version Lem touches (but only touches) issues of conflict as aims of society vs. aims of personality, as it challenges people who try to reach only closest star system. In some way, it is similar to western sci-fi - it doesn't say anything nice about way the Western lives and how it ends. But as socialist Lem of course tries to provide alternative. Of course, big question is - is this possible.
Anyway, what I wanted to underline that so called "Socialism in space" was more than propaganda, it had different mind set, and sometimes it was for me as small boy easier to connect to those stories with all scientific stuff and challenges of scientists against their egos and needs. Also they definitely tried to imagine how life of people would be in future, how social and moral elements change - for good, of course. While Western sci-fi (as it holds roots more in Scepticism) bashes human nature and don't find escape from it, however there are lot of funny and hopeful authors. I still wait for sci-fi who would embrace both of these - western and "socialist" styles. That would definitely exciting to read.
In resume, I really miss sci-fi which could inspire and lift up, not just show future from very pessimistic point of view. Yes, we as humanity has huge issues, starting with problem to lacking people who value humanity over their egos, who work together with others to achieve something. It is not said that everyone should work and live together as brothers, but at least we should not try to kill each other because of small petty differences.
Just my two euro cents,
Peter.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
This image from the article reminds me of Tintin: Explorers on the Moon published in 1954, a year later.
The x-ray glasses advertised in the back of those science mags don't work.
FAQs are evil.
When I look at those pictures it makes me sad and very mad at the same time.
What happened to humanity? We used to dream about bright space future, flying cars, scientific progress and stuff like that. And we had hope to achieve all of this if we put enough effort into it. And now I think we lost that hope.
I don't see people dreaming about anything more than getting a million dollars and doing 2 chicks at the same time...
And you can bash soviets all you wish, but they had one thing right- the education was non-religious and pushed belief in sience most of the time. (Well, there were propaganda bits and belief in communist ideals, but these were easily discarded and did not interfere with science). I think soviet union was the first and only truly non-religious state. And that is something to be admired.
Don't get me wrong. I realize that the technological progress now is faster than it ever was. But you get no rush thinking about it anymore. It is not considered exciting and sexy and bright. It fails to captivate the minds of people. And I think it should be.
--Coder
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"Steve Jobs invented the world" -- Bill W. GATES
If something worth noting in 20th century.. it is the space race. Two big powers, trying so hard, investing billions on research to conquere the space. WoW!!! We saw saturn-5, black bird, harrier and many other great stuff, at first look.. we just say "awesome" in that era.
Space race ended after the fall of berlin wall. In world peace sense, it is one of the greatest thing happened last century. But it also marks the end of some bleeding edge technology, creativity. If you think about many technologies which we enjoy today are infact directly or indirectly influenced by the technologies developed in those space-race days.
Tell you one nice example. Back in cold war, Americans sended these mini-sattelites. They just take photographs of russia, then land (more likely.. crash landing) somewhere. In that.. they didn't use typical film roles and stuff. Instead, they take gray images, pixel-ize, each gray shade has a distinct number in a scale.. which then printed in a recorder. Which is highly sophisticated and un-hackable by that times technology. (I saw this on Discovery) Think.. this is the start of pixel based digital imaging. Still I find it WoW!
Look! Rare Soviet Retro-Future Space Art!
I wish I could remember who did them. Lovely "space scenes". I also wish I still had some of the catalogues, but not half as much as how much I wish Maplin still stocked the goodies they did then.
The pieces identified as:
image credit: Klaus Burgle
TM cover, Russia 1953
and "Nuclear Rocketship" by Frank Tinsley, 1959
really remind me of some of the artwork from 2001: A Space Odyssey. At least the artwork I remember being on the album for the movie. I suppose there just aren't many ways of seeing people standing around on the moon!
Looks a bit.. funny Or maybe it's just my dirty fantasy.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
I recognize quite a few of those illustrations.
That's what partially inspired me to go into tech in the first place. I wanted to make those images a reality.
An interesting piece of trivia - pictures credited with TM were published by the official magazine of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. This magazine was targeted at teens. Among other things, we had ZX80 source listings, MK61 programmable calculator listings, and so forth. Those were simple games that I would have to painstakingly type in on my MK61 calculator in RPN notation. Yet they taught me the principles of directly addressing a microprocessor. I had a subscription to many of these magazines since I was 5. Yet now in US we are experiencing a rapid decline in science education. It sounds unthinkable that Whitehouse would sponsor something like this, even though the expense would be trivial and would promote agencies like NASA. Something needs to happen before we wind up a 3rd world country due to lack of science, lack of big dreams, and apathy. That's precisely what USSR did. Even though the scientists were paid miserly wages, the children were inspired to get involved in building the future. I don't ever see big dreams promoted in the US. Everything is compartmentalized, processed, antisocial, and really not inspiring.
I will own several of the technological marvels such as flying cars within a few years. I will do it because I still have dreams and still remember what inspired me. But will others? Or will they be toiling away in overwhelming debt unable to see through the haze of daily stress? The only thing I can think of that is good for science and inspiration lately is Mythbusters. That's my opinion, but it probably made more than a few kids curious about chemistry at the very least.
This is so sad that it brought tears to my eyes.
Leonid S. Knyshov
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the two odd (interesting?) things about these pictures?
1. Almost without exception, the ships depicted in space, on the moon, etc, are shown with pointy or round noses. If you're in space, you don't have to worry about aerodynamics and certainly not on places which have no atmosphere (the moon).
2. The first picture below To Saturn and beyond: shows people on a moon of Saturn wearing full spacesuits EXCEPT for the camera man.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Notice how few of these images center on a single individual. Mostly they are space-scapes or pictures of massive engineering projects in which people are tiny figures like in an architect's model, if they appear at all.
There's only one image that would be typical of a US sci fi magazine cover, with the handsome space pioneer man in the foreground and his female counterpart in the background. Even so, there is little suggestion that the pioneer man plays a key role as an individual in whatever action is being depicted.
This might be an artifact of selection, but it's tempting to speculate that this reflects a collectivist view of the future. Still, I have a certain kitschy fondness for Socialist Realism school of art, and many such works do use an heroic individual as a focal point -- albeit either an anonymous one or a historical hero like Lenin. Arguably in either case, Socialist Realism uses the individual functioning as a representative of the working class.
These images are quite austere and free of any hint of individuality as a focal point in the imagined future.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
..is the code of the original blog article. When I hit the page I wondered why is was so SLOW SLOW SLOW.
Aha. Reveal Source shows why: the linked page has 2300 lines of evil garbage code and only about 10 lines of actual content.
Wrapped around the tiny sliver of content it has TONS of Google adwords javascripts, in-numerable crap links to rubbish sites and affiliate-deal retailers and crap-merchants, various suss i-frames being called in by the code, in-numerable remote links calling down remote image and javascripts etc etc ad nauseum.
Oh, and I also shouldn't forget to mention the **5** or more shitty stat counting javascripts (sitemeter, easyhitcounters, urchin, mybloglog.com etc) that page also pulls in and which want to set cookies on my PC and do God knows what else.
Die!!! darkroastedblend.com. If there was a Hell for web developers, I'd happily see you hurled into there, alongside the very worst of the MySpacers and other HTML hooligans.
Pity the Slashdot traffic didn't melt your server down to a blob of slag. You deserve it.
These are interesting, but my favorite "retro" art of that era is still the work done by Erik Nitsche for General Dynamics' "Atoms for Peace" program.. Anyone know where I can find reproductions?
"It's only been half a century since we developed powered flight, and we're on our way to the Moon" is inspiring.
"It's been half a century since we went to the Moon, and we're having trouble just putting a little space station in Low Earth Orbit" is depressing.
Or as someone else summed it up: "The Cold War is over." Nobody who could afford to build orbital spaceships ever really wanted to, not when making really big ICBMs was all it took to embarrass the Soviets, and certainly not after our first spaceship prototype turned out to be a flop.
If you read some of the SF that was illustrated by those pictures, you'll find out that in most of them - its one united communist world.
And not just any communist world. Its makes Star Trek with its space battles and wars seem like a second rate utopia.
Capitalism, hunger, disease, wars, borders, ignorance - all of that is extinct.
On the other hand, some visions were quite... bizarre.
I remember reading this book where soviet (as in Soviet Earth) cosmonauts are on a mission to some far away planet or other and along the way they stumble upon a earlier era.
It is not explicitly mentioned, but it is obvious that what they find is a US military starship. The crew was dead because of the inadequate radiation protection or something.
But the part that was most amusing was how cosmonauts reacted to pin-up posters on the walls.
From not understanding the purpose of posters of naked women on the walls, to questions like why are their lips and nails painted red.
Now... a utopia where people don't understand the concept of disease or capitalism... OK.
But one where they don't know about porn and makeup?
Riiiight... I guess they also forgot how to make beer.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Turn of the computer, get outside and find yourself a girlfriend. NOW!
Or at least prostitute.
Vagina shaped nebula? Good good...
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
One thing you can say about the Soviets, they had among their ideals equality between the sexes.
In one of the paintings there's a woman standing next to a man, and they're both wearing the same outfit and appear to be equals in the space endeavor, which is a far cry from how space exploration was portrayed in the USA, with only white men permitted to go anywhere near a spaceship.
This sig, aah-ah, is comin' like a ghost-sig...
I just hope I am not too late.
I also wrote god with one "O"? I need coffey...
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/eriknitsche, download the original size images, print them up on a wide format printer.
-- Boycott Shell
These images represent the next wave in "retro" designs we'll see out of Detroit's automakers.
Tradition states that only a manned launch is considered a "first" for gloating purposes. If you count unmanned launches, then the Soviets were first on the Moon, Mars, and Venus.
Check out that image of the determined manly man in a space suit working away while the young lady in a skirt and holding a Raggedy Anne doll looks on in wonder.
It reminds me of one early Star Trek episode where Kirk turns to a very short skirted Yeoman Rand and says something like "get me some coffee honey".
There's more Soviet space art here and here.
Which makes me wonder, what other coolness have the Russians been hiding behind their backs?
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What exactly are the two men on the right trying to do in this one?
Property is theft.
Good photo group here:
http://flickr.com/groups/paleo-future/pool/
and from Taiwan:
http://flickr.com/photos/cantikfotos/sets/72157594230283909/
and
http://flickr.com/photos/cantikfotos/sets/72157594190669543/
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
the B&W pic of the tentacled vehicle somewhat disturbing? Seems that, in the future, we somehow harness giant octopi to power our planetary surface exploration vehicles. Also, the Mars Snooper looks just like the Estes rocket of the same name from "back in the day."
Does this picture remind anyone of The Fountain?
I'm also guilty of posting a "we live in mundane times" missive in this thread (albeit related to space exploration) but you are right, we aren't seeing the forest for the trees. We take as granted things that were science fiction dreams just a couple of decades ago.
From time to time I will catch myself thinking "Wow, we are now finally living in the real future" as imagined in the Sci Fi pulps of the past. Step back a bit and take a look at through the eyes of someone from the 50's or 60's.
The huge, flat TV's that hang on walls like a picture are here!. The cars with sleek aerodynamic designs running on electricity are here! The clean forms of energy that banish the clouds of soot from the sky are here! These things will be improved even more as time goes on.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Just nitpicking.
3.243F6A8885A308D313
I have been living in the States for many years and one thing still puzzles me: Americans know so little about their former enemy. Why is this space art is such a surprise? Do you really believe that all Soviets did was related to drinking vodka and breaking backs in Gulag? Soviet Union had art, music and science. Are you aware of the fact that most Soviet high schools taught organic chemistry in the 10th and 11th grades? Please spare me "but what about the food lines" statements. The system screwed the people beyond belief and there was little that even smart people could do about the political aspect of the country.
Years ago I recall a question from one of American high school students, "Do bears run on streets in Russia?" I thought that the person was kidding. No, this was a serious question. Apparently the student thought that Soviet/Russian cities (the terms that he used as synonyms) were full of bears and vodka drinking hunters with bad manners. The insulting part was that this question came from somebody who knew nothing about chemistry, physics or calculus in his junior year of high school. We did not have bears, but we had Z80s, programmable calculators, home grown vector processors (Elbrus) and enough nukes to destroy the world. You know, the usual items found in half-way houses :)
Those who are interested in the subject of art and space may want to read up on Alexey Leonov. He summarized his experiences in space in a book and many drawings. Check out the wiki. I am not sure if any copies of Technical Molodezhi (Technology of the Youth) were translated into English, but it was a really neat magazine. I started reading it as soon as I could read and understand some of the basic concepts. Think of Popular Science + Popular Mechanics + various news articles related to physical sciences combined in one package.
in the communist societies science was not supposed to enrich the scientists or some bunch of bankers and investors, it was supposed to advance the human kind... and that is exactly what science is for.
the communists did a lot of bad stuff but noone can accuse them for lack of grand scale and long term vision.
plus, long term thinking is one of the last things to expect from a retard in cowboy boots and a bunch of greedy pigs.
"There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If you compare the American and Soviet science fiction, you will see that American sci-fi novels very often (if not always) carry some military theme or references (invasions, interstellar wars, presence of military personnel and advanced warfare on space ships, etc.), while Soviet and Eastern-bloc writers focus mostly on difficulties of space exploration, daily routines of colonization of other planets, and always promote peaceful resolution of interplanetary conflicts. IMHO.
The word is 'Zeerust', it's a much better word and Douglas Adams defined it, so lets not use these crappy hyphenated words that sound a bit zeerust themselves...
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"The Dispossessed" by Ursula Le Guin might provide the blending of Western and Socialist styles in space that you are looking for. It also happens to be one of my all time favourite books, and is a great read even if it isn't quite what you had in mind style-wise.
...but what all of the images depict is a stunning display of hope for the human race as a whole.
As someone who grew up surrounded by photographs of nebulae and NASA mission patches, it grieves me that space exploration has become such a low priority. Most people in the US not only see it as unimportant, they can't even understand why it was important in the first place. Yes, the Cold War was a mighty spur in the direction of outer space, but NASA's budget was being whittled away long before the Berlin Wall came down. There were plans for fully re-usable spacecraft (one that was far different and more cost-effective than the current shuttle), manned orbital stations, and a moon base before the first manned lunar lander even got off of the ground. Now? We're lucky to see a few shuttle launches per year.
I've never given up on the vision that these images depict, but I've become sadly resigned to the fact that it will most likely be our great-grandchildren that see it happen, rather than our kids, grandkids, or ourselves. And it seems to me that more people ought to be upset about that.
Doing my level best to piss off the religious right wing...
There's something fishy here. The one titled "destination moon" is strikingly similar to a famous piece of Chesley Bonestell's art. The hills and the "scope" are almost verbatim.
Table-ized A.I.
I didn't mean that communism has an inherent flaw for understanding economics - I meant that SOMEone might argue that - wrongly.
As for the reason for "strangeness" - nah... it was just propaganda.
It wasn't a really "smart" SF. Pulp space opera...
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The Indians do. And the Chinese do. Probably most of Asia.
Which is why those places are so exciting right now. I really think Western leaderships need to excite their peoples about the future. We made a lot of progress with that kind of excitement. But it probably requires more than just words, so it will be hard to do.
Lies about crimes