#50's scifi

[technicallyclassyperfection]

Frank Kelly Freas (1922-2005)

[cursed-transformers-gifs]

[duranduratulsa]

Now showing on DuranDuranTulsa's Plenty Scary Movie...The Wasp Woman (1959) on classic DVD 📀! #movie #movies #horror #scifi #monstermovies #creaturefeature #TheWaspWoman #RogerCorman #riprogercorman #50s #DVD #durandurantulsa #durandurantulsasplentyscarymovie #plentyscarymovie #8sThePlace #ktul

[ryversreality]

pinup of Helmethead

I am finished with winter now I want summer 😁👍🏖️

[howlingmadmoonwolf]

The Man from Planet X (1951)

"The Deadliest Enemy the World has ever Known!"

[spockeye-fierce]

[williamjosephroberts]

Don't you love it when inspiration hits just right?

Don't you love it when inspiration hits just right?

Usually, for me, ideas tend to hit right when I’m in the middle of doing something, hands covered in grease, in the shower, doing the dishes, etc. So usually, I’ll have to repeat the idea to myself until I can scramble for a notepad or my phone to jot down the idea and get it out of the brain pan. Luckily the idea that hit recently, happened to be while we were hanging out in Pigeon Forge for…

[legally-obligated-to-nonsense]

I need the next great sci-fi movie to open specifically to this song and this song only.

[motelfullmassage]

Movies for Halloween

It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958)

I have a weakness for 50's SciFi movies and this is one of the first I remember seeing on one of the creature feature shows from back in the day. In it, Col. Edward Carruthers is the only survivor of a mission to Mars gone bad. When the rescue ship arrives, they accuse him of having killed the other members of his mission for their food and water rations. On their way back to Earth, however, they find that they have a stowaway, and Col. Carruthers might not be the culprit after all! Enjoy!

[thetimetravelingsalesman]

No matter how far in the future you go, mid century modern furniture always looks good. The only timeless furniture…

[technicallyclassyperfection]

ed emshwiller cover art for galaxy, january 1956

~ I loved the rocket kettle.

[stra-tek]

More Roddenberry Archive musings...

This is supposedly the launch configuration of the Prime universe U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701's main bridge. It's based on the first piece of concept art for the TOS set, and is one of several weird not-quite-canon things the Roddenberry Archive has decided to consider canonical. 2 command chairs and the whole centre console and chairs spins to face the very minimalist 60's scifi perimeter consoles or viewscreen. Try to imagine Captain April and first officer Chris Pike on this bridge, it's weird.

Behold! The top of the Jeffries Tube.

FERENGI ATM MACHINE ON THE PROMENADE!!!!

The view from OG Captain Pike's bed, featuring his awesome TV, his laser gun and his Starfleet hat. We wouldn't get hats back in Trek for 50 years.

This is inside the Ringship Enterprise XCV-330, circa 2100. The Ringship in canon was seen only in picture form or a desktop model, we never saw inside. The ship was actually designed for a non-Trek Roddenberry scifi show called Starship which never came to be, and there was actually concept art made for the interior which the RA people decided to import to Trek too. Predating the transporter, here is the Metafier.

Discovery Season 2's U.S.S. Enterprise has a cool corridor running around it. Walk around it and... it goes nowhere😂 the Archive tries to balance the reality of everything being a television show with the fantasy of a 100% accurate in-universe museum, it'll give sets ceilings to make them into a believable spaceship but doesn't want to go nuts inventing too much of it's own stuff and that sometimes leads to weird stuff like this dead end

Speaking of ceilings, here's the ceiling and lights of the classic TOS Enterprise's corridors. I think they did a decent job keeping to the TOS aesthetic. The sets TOS was filmed on didn't have ceilings at all.

The Enterprise-B actually had a red carpet for special guests Kirk, Scotty and Chekov

Strange New Worlds has the coolest transporter room of all. Just look at it😍

The TNG Enterprise battle bridge has it's own ready room! And it's super tiny, ultra cramped and Picard probably never used it because there's no replicator in there and thus no access to tea.

The 1st version of TNG engineering's big Master Systems Display as seen in "Encounter at Farpoint". Ten Forward wouldn't be a thing until season 2, and you can see here an earlier deck layout and the original concept for the saucer rim, a corridor walkway with windows above and below. You'll also note Ten Forward would actually be on deck 11 had they not changed the diagram by then.

Kirk's quarters on the TOS Enterprise has dresser drawers full of uniforms for when his gets torn

Walking around the Roddenberry Archive ships is eerie as hell. You're the only one on board, exploring corridors and poking your head into rooms. These starships are liminal spaces. This for me adds to the atmosphere greatly.

Here's the link (enjoy before it vanishes again!):

Roddenberry.x.io

Here's my original post about the Roddenberry Archive:

Also a clarification, I was wrong when I said it won't be in VR. There is one VR setup it was designed for - the $3,000 Apple Vision Pro. More details here, although it appears to only show a 2D window rather than be fully immersive 3D, possibly confirming what I was told previously that no current 3D setup is capable of doing a true VR experience:

[duranduratulsa]

Now showing on DuranDuranTulsa's Plenty Scary Movie 🎥... Attack Of The Giant Leeches (1959) on classic DVD 📀! #movie #movies #horror #scifi #monstermovies #creaturefeature #attackofthegiantleeches #50s #durandurantulsa #plentyscarymovie #8sThePlace #ktul #durandurantulsasplentyscarymovie

[classichorrorblog]

i didnt see it on your blog or letterboxd, but want to recommend Invaders from Mars (1953)! solid 50's scifi movie. really enjoyed it

Thank you! Yeah I haven’t seen the original. Just the 1980s remake which was fun but not all that great. I will check it out at some point though.

[stonegearstudios]

Flash Gordon & the Sci-Fi of Almost a Century Ago!

I've got a interest in old scifi. That's not strange, plenty of people do, though what interests me most might be slightly more unusual.

I'm interested in the good ideas and the bad, at the same time. Now, it's no surprise that old scifi has it's issues, literally everything does, but the common treatment of women, race, politics... well we'll see soon.

Despite all that I like looking back at old stuff to try and pic the good out of the bad, to see what were genuinely the revolutionary ideas while not ignoring the real issues.

I also happen to run a weekly watch party in the RPPR discord and this week were starting the 1980 Flash Gordon movie, so I thought, why not go back and read the original comic strip, starting at the beginning way back in the 30's?

And on a Sunday no less

So, Flash Gordon. Without doing a whole biography, here are some basic details

The first strip came out on January 7, 1934, though given it was in the big Sunday papers, strip is less appropriate, more of a comic block really, full colour to

It was explicitly made as a... should I say knock off? of Buck Rogers, made more than 5 years earlier (Will probably read Buck Rogers sometime to)

According to Wikipedia, they tried to get the license to make their comic a John Carter adaptation, but when negotiations fell through, Flash was born (hey, just like Star Wars 50 years later)

Apparently early Flash was also inspired by the 1933 novel When Worlds Collide, which I have some experience with, will be interesting to see how

Ok, let's get started. I have no idea if these comics are in the public domain yet so I won't be posting the whole things, just individual panels here and there

Polo, really? Polo?! Can you get more poncy?

Starting off, we hit the ground running. In only 7 panels we learn a rogue planet is flying toward Earth (and this World will Collide with it), apparently there is a lone scientist is driving himself mad working on a solution, and our two main characters are introduced and swiftly put in peril as a meteor from the approaching planet just so happens to destroy their planet.

There's not much SciFi yet, besides the approaching planet. I feel like rogue planets are a trope that used to be more common, though I can't be sure. Apparently the first exoplanet evidence was found in 1917 but one wasn't confirmed until 1992, so it makes sense that writers would be theorizing about them.

On the less good side, the second and third panels are used to show how "primitive" peoples are helpless before the approach of the planet, and can do nothing besides turn to superstition. It will be interesting to see how non-white characters are portrayed as the comic goes on, though I'll be surprised if it can, well surprise me before we get to a more modern take.

I mean, Flash isn't wrong, but good lord what's wrong with your legs man?!

In the second half, we get a look at Flash's abilities. A meteor knocks a wing of the plane he was in clean off and somehow he manages to both put on a parachute, grab Dale (was Dale a common woman's name back then? I don't know) and jump clear of the tailspin. Effortless for a Capable Man™, the pilot and any other crew are just out of luck I guess though.

Quite economical storytelling that a meteor from the approaching planet (Which somehow got way, way out in front of it) would knock them down right in time to land in front of the lab of the only scientist would could stop the planet... who then holds them at gunpoint and forces them into his rocket in what he thinks is a suicide mission. I guess that stress really is getting to him.

A couple of things here, yeah, the story is going a bit to fast, but this is a Sunday comic after all, you get one a week then have to wait a week for the next one so I imagine there was quite a bit of pressure to make each instalment feel worth it.

It's also such a classic scifi thing to have a lone scientist working on a vast machine. Like, did he do the metallurgy himself? How did he move the parts? Is he an Omnidisciplinary genius? Old scifi has no time for these rational questions, we need to get into space by comic 2!

Speaking of

Strip 2 (presumably published on Jan 14th)

Oh yeah, this is the good stuff

Dr Hans Zarkov (Zarkov doesn't seem to be a real name but Hans implies something Germanic, given this is the early 30's I wonder if that implies anything?) continues his manic break, suddenly becoming a coward who doesn't want to die while Flash is now committed to ramming himself into this planet.

It's nice that Dale's first instinct is to grab a wrench to wallop the doctor, that will serve her well. And then we see the panel above. This is the kind of simple yet evocative scifi art I would have rotated in my mind for hours if I had read this as a kid. A submarine like rocket, a glittering city set against a pitch black sky (implying no atmosphere?) I love it.

And then we are reminded that planets have gravity and you really should have someone at the controls of your rocket. BANG, CRASH, and the rocket crumples into a mountain. Despite what must have been a impact at thousands of km/h, Flash is just fine (even if his polo gear is a bit torn up) while Dale is just unconscious. Leaving the rocket (without Hans) Flash walks to the city in the distance.

Gotta have a cliffhanger each week, wonder if one will have a literal cliff?

Other than the rogue planet, the first strip didn't have much to draw me in if I was reading Flash on release, but this? This would catch my attention. Alien worlds, alien monsters, mysterious cities! This would get me coming back next week, good thing I don't have to wait that long.

One thing to note I suppose is the interior of the rocket, with all it's pipes, pressure gauges and such, reminds me more of a Jules Verne creation than a rocket, but we aren't that far from Verne's age in the 30's, now were we?

Strip 3

Slowly, slowly eating him. How considerate

Well, Mongo (I'm assuming that's where we are) certainly doesn't waste any time. You crash and giant lizard-cat monsters are trying to eat you inside five minutes. Better get more than a pen knife Flash old buddy.

We also see the classic trope of "Oh no, a giant monster is about to eat me! Oh no a second one! Oh, they're fighting each other, better get away". But then, rockets!

That's one heck of a worrying trajectory for someone with only rear mounted rockets

Aliens! Who look just like rubber foreheaded people, guess Star Trek had to get it somewhere.

Now, there's no getting around this, the very human-like aliens are literally coloured yellow, their leader (called the Emperor of the Universe here) is named Ming (though not named yet, wonder when that will happen). It's been a while since I did a deep dive into Yellow Peril, but lets just say, despite how stereotyped he was, I was surprised the African man in the first comic wasn't drawn with big pink lips. Racism is an intrinsic part of almost all media from this era, one of the reasons I still haven't gotten into John Carter yet is the opening blurb where his backstory is discussed. There were exceptions to this, even at the time though, and I think it's important to remember this wasn't a hard rule, it was laziness and pandering to a lowest common denominator audience.

Anyway, in terms of scifi tropes... well, we quickly have a Emperor on his thrown, he grabs up all the pretty ladies, sends our hero to the arena to die, archetypal bad guy.

Strip 4

Flash is a great dancer

Straight into the arena and the appearance of another pulp staple, Man-Apes. I wonder what the first property to use them was, The Island of Dr. Moreau?

Anyway, as a certified Capable Man™ Flash has no trouble dispatching them, despite the fact that other primapes have muscles that work a bit differently than us humans, so a single blow could have de-gloved him (don't google that).

While the fight panels are more than a bit disjointed, the actual poses aren't bad. You see how powerfully Flash is built (and several of them would make George Takei go "Oh My") and using your opponents as a weapon is always fun.

By the standards of the day, the ladies haven't been that bad so far

Ming, being an evil Emperor of course, can't have this, so Flash must be shot down. Good thing that like all imperial goons, his men are terrible shots. And lucky for Flash he leapt into the viewing box of the Emperor's daughter, who calls for his mercy.

The evil emperor has got to have a inexplicably pure and good daughter to, it's just the law. What's really funny is how in the very next panel, Flash falls down a trap door. Really lets you know what kinda guy Ming is. Has a trap door to the Hole of Horrors™ installed in his own daughters booth. I shudder to think what he put in her bedroom, swinging blades?

Now, I can recognize that this is the old love at first sight for a man you don't know trope, but I prefer to believe our Princess is just so fed up with her dad she would have jumped after anyone. Anything to get out of another state dinner :V

And that's 4 comics. Let's see if I can make this a regular thing. 4 comics a week, on Sundays since Flash was a Sunday comic.

If this was interesting at all, why not drop me a comic on your own thoughts, especially if you decide to join me in a readthrough.

Until next week, set your Rockets to Maximum!

[scrunglepaws]

My Main AUs! ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

🌈 Kaleidoscope // #kaleidoscope au Fics: [Act 1] [Act 2] [Act 3] [Mangey Remembers (prequel)]

A scifi/survival/mystery starring Tails, Nine, and Mangey with a heavy focus on introspection and platonic love between friends. Sort of accidentally became a slowburn friendship between Mangey+Nine xD

🌊 Someplace // #someplace au Fics: [Aquarius] [A Drop in the Ocean (prequel)] [planned sequel 'w']

A dysfunctional and slightly homicidal, but ultimately heartfelt and sweet KitxSails story. The tag also includes their backstories, including the worldbuilding expansion I did for No Place. Hence the au's name.

💜 CaveTails* // #cavetails au Fics: [wip!]

Kittails + 50's-ish setting + Journey to the Center of the Earth/King Kong vibes + werefox Tails = au that I can’t think of a name for, so it's still called its working title. Closeted gay research assistant Kit falls into the arms of a MOOOONSTER on a perilous expedition. Can the rest of the research expedition (Surge+the hooligans) save him in time? Does he want to be saved?

🌿 The Kelpie // #folklore au Fics: [The Kelpie]

Fantasy setting where fae creatures and normal mobians are at odds with each other. Tails tries to use his magical prowess to craft something that will surely take care of the local kelpie problem. Well, either that or he'll be met with a grisly underwater death. More kittails.

☣️ No Heroes Zone // #nhz au Fics: [Broken Bond] [Takeout]

Au where the dynamics between the characters have shifted to make everyone more towards that middling grey area. Eggman isn't as villainous, Sonic isn't as heroic. No one really has a good time. A collection of episodic stories that primarily focus on Tails and Metal.

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Yellow! I use this account to post my Sonic-related art and writing! I try to keep my queue full so I have at least one doodle to post a day. Any writing I get done is a bonus. :D (My Ao3 is also scrunglepaws!) I love all of the Sonic characters, but mostly focus on my favorites + my aus. Once in a while I post fanart of other peoples' fanstuff if I get the gumption! owo

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My absolute favorite lil guys: Kit, Tails, Mangey, Nine, Metal Sonic, Tails Doll, Eclipse, Silver

Other guys I really like: Mighty, Ray, Chaos Sonic, Tangle, Surge, Dr. Starline, Mimic, Barry, Omega, Shard, Mecha Tails (the silver one), Rusty Rose, Sails, Froggy (No Place), Dive, Tilly, Thunderbolt

Favorite Character Matchups (x=romo, +=platonic): Nine+Mangey, KitxTails, Kit+Tails, Tails+Metal, Shadow+Metal, Tails+Shadow, Nine+Sonic

Likes/Follows will come from my main, scrungleCLAWS. I use that account to reblog cool art and things with my silly commentary (read: gushing usually) in the tags. I also post music I like and occasional mumblings. You should follow it to see other peoples' pretty art! If you want! 'w'

🌽WARNING: CORN ALERT!!! :D🌽

I am all about spreading joy, creativity, and positivity. I care a lot about the things I make and I hope that my passion shines through to make others happy, or even inspire. I'm also horrendously corny (you were warned!), but that's okay. At worse I'll give off second-hand embarrassment (I’m so sorry! 8C), but at best I'll attract people that aren't afraid to be earnest and cool and fun around me. That is to say: leave that super long comment, send that ask, draw/write that thing, formally request friendship (!?)! And if you're ever feeling shy, embarrassed, or like you're "just too much"… Think of this paragraph some person named SCRUNGLEPAWS wrote on the internet. You cannot possibly be more corny than me. It might even be illegal.

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Other Stories/Ideas I Might Expand Upon: - Second Chance AU (x): Kit works at an animal shelter - The Last Fox (x): Knuckles/Tails swap au - Nine's Shadow (x): The Grim did have variants, they’re just dead / Zombie Tails - Rascals (x): Shadow has to take care of the main cast who have all mysteriously turned into babies - BFF AU (x): Tails Doll makes a Kit Doll for a friend - Alien* (x): Silver is an alien that crash lands on Mobius

That’s all for now! Have a fruitful/cornful day! :D