m. c. de marco: To invent new life and new civilizations...

Tales of Future Past

Tales of Future Past [via del.icio.us scifi] features retrofuturistic images and commentary:

It wasn’t that long ago that we had a future […] that we could clearly imagine.  The future wasn’t tomorrow, next week, next year, or next century.  It was a place with a form, a structure, a style.  True, we didn’t know exactly what the future would be like, but we knew that it had to be one of a few alternatives; some good, some very bad.  The future was a world with a distinct architecture.  It had its own way of speaking.  It had its own technology.  It was for all intents and purposes a different land where people dressed differently, talked differently, ate differently, and even thought differently.  It was where scientists were wizards, where machines were magically effective and efficient, where tyrants were at least romantically evil rather than banal, and where the heavens were fairyland where dreams could literally come true.