Tales Of Future Past

from the Futurama-polooza dept

Here's an interesting review that covers tales of future past -- a website dedicated to collecting images of distant worlds and futures, as predicted by old magazines and science fiction. And there's also RetroFuture to help you remember flying cars and smell-o-vision. Ah, yes, remember when computers were predicted to beat us all at chess? Oh wait.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  1. identicon
    dorpus, 25 May 2004 @ 4:45pm

    Reflection of their times

    Ray Bradbury's writing is treated as modern literature, though there are passages that are embarassingly sexist or racist. In Fahrenheit 451, the fireman is married to a "typical" woman of the future, who sounds like she has an IQ of 60 or 70. There are passages that describe second generation Chinese-Americans as a "social problem", a symptom of the "alienation" of modern life. In the Martian Chronicles, there is a short story where blacks move en masse to Mars, and one of them is stopped at the rocket because he owes money to a white guy. Modern editions may or may not have censored these passages.

    Star Trek episodes of the 1960s portray women of the future as submissive sex dolls. Sci-fi from that era foresaw a future in which we had advanced spaceships by 2000, but still had computers with ferrite-ring cores and punch cards. In essence, space was portrayed as a Wild West inhabited by nonwhite or communist aliens who needed to be corrected. Half human/half alien subjects are portrayed as the Tragic Mullatos of the future.

    No doubt, science fiction written today will likely appear embarassing to future generations, be they the thinly disguised Muslim terrorists, the free-market fanaticism, or the prevailing sensibilities of our times that require a rigid social adherence to praise music, movies, and travelling.




    link to this | view in thread ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.