Time for a pulp countdown now, so here's my top 10 future inventions we were promised by Popular Mechanics magazine that we're still waiting for! #SaturdayMotivation
At #10: motorised unicycles! This was a very popular Edwardian idea inspired by the penny farthing bicycle. Although a few prototypes were made we never really fell in love with driving one big wheel. Also: not great in the rain...
At #9: personal radar. Now this is actually a pretty neat idea and a number of cars now use radar or lidar as an anti- aid. We're still waiting for it to be built into a hat however.
At #8: the ion drive. Some space probes do use this as an efficient incremental mode of propulsion. Getting it to power flight on Earth is a bit trickier.
At #7: wearable gyrocopters. More powerful than jetpacks the concept certainly works, but it's still a solution in search of a problem. Oh, and deafeningly loud!
At #6: airships for everyon. The airship is the quintessential pulp mode of transport and modern blimps are pretty safe. But we still don't like to travel by gasbag, no matter how sustainable it may actually be.
At #5: air tugs. Having one aircraft transport another one can make sense: it's one way to crack the problem of single stage to orbit flight. Virgin Galactic are the only current takers though.
At #4: rocket-assisted vehicles. It's a neat way to manoeuvre a truck on tricky terrain, or to break a speeding car quickly, but putting rockets on cars is probably going to cause more problems than it solves.
At #3: recreational helicopters. The 1950s was the heyday of recreational flight ideas; soon we would all vacation in the Sikorsky RV. However we still stubbornly refuse to embrace the chopper as a flying Winnebago. It's hard enough towing a caravan!
At #2: monorails. Why we still think this is futuristic is beyond me. It's certainly not faster than traditional rail and apart from shuttling people around theme parks or airports it's remained a niche proposition.
And of course, at #1: flying cars! We've been promised this for so long that I'm beginning to think it will never happen.
That's it for our paleo-futuristic look at Popular Mechanics. More gee-whizz history another time...
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What do Batman, Spiderman, Bettie Page, Madonna and women wrestlers have in common? Well I'll tell you: they all feature in the life of today's featured pulp artist.
Today I look back at the career of "the father of fetish" Eric Stanton!
Eric Stanton was born in New York in 1926. His childhood was marred by many illnesses, and confined to bed he learnt to draw by tracing comic books. He was fascinated by strong Amazonian women like Sheena, Queen of the Jungle and soon began creating similar cartoons.
After high school Stanton joined the Navy in 1944, putting his skills to use in drawing aircraft recognition cartoons. Post-war he got a job with cartoonist Gordon 'Boody' Rogers, creator of Babe: Amazon Of The Ozarks.
Given the weather is getting warmer I feel obliged to ask the following question: is it time to bring back the leisure suit?
Let's find out...
Now we all know what a man's lounge suit is, but if we're honest it can be a bit... stuffy. Formal. Businesslike. Not what you'd wear 'in da club' as the young folks say.
So for many years tailors have been experimenting with less formal, but still upmarket gents attire. The sort of garb you could wear for both a high level business meeting AND for listening to the Moody Blues in an espresso bar. Something versatile.
Today in pulp... Blade Runner! Let's look back at the classic 1982 movie and see how it compares to original novel.
"It's not an easy thing to meet your maker..."
Blade Runner is based on Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? However 'inspired' may be a better word, as the film is very different to the book.
In the novel Deckard is a bounty hunter for the San Francisco police. The year is 1992; Earth has been ravaged by war and humans are moving to off-world colonies to protect their genetic integrity. They are given organic robots to help them, created by the Rosen Association.