Old books, movies and music. Keeping Twitter busy since 2014.
Joined December 2014
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1 May 2018
Hello, and welcome to the pulp library, a bibliothèque of bemusement! You can find my previous threads here: threadreaderapp.com/user/Pul…
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Clippy wasn't actually called Clippy.
The Microsoft Office Assistant was officially named Clippit.
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The Net on Laserdisc is probably peak modern retrofuturism.
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"A fast girl likes a fast buck!" True Cases of Women in Crime, May 1952.
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"Was she condemned to indecency because of her bawdy mother?"
White Trash, by Beulah Poynter. Uni Books, 1952.
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Tonight The Sky Will Fall! by Daniel F. Galouye. Imagination, May 1952.
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"We can stop the enemies of youth." Boy Meets Girl issue 20, 1952. Art by Frank Frazetta.
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Jun 12
Sham 69: Hersham Boys (1979). The biggest UK hit for the band (yes, it was bigger than 'If the Kids Are United') and probably one of their best attempts at a video.
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The perils of masturbation as explained through the medium of obelisks.* (1942)
(*it's the only language kids understand nowadays)
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"Belly laffs by America's leading gag men."
Gayety, May 1942. Cover by Alex Schomburg.
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Land of Unreason, by Fletcher Pratt and L. Sprague de Camp. Holt & Co, 1942. Cover art by Boris Artzybasheff.
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After an Age, by Eando Binder. Amazing Stories, November 1942. Cover by Robert Gibson Jones.
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Bond Street pipe tobacco (1942). May cause hallucinations...
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Jun 10
If you had to pick a '90s look: early '90s or late '90s?
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Jun 11
I'm assuming the '90s was just ten years ago. I mean that's probably right. Maybe 12 years at a pinch.
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Jun 11
This was the greatest pinball table of the 1990s and it's not even close.
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Raffaella Carrà: A far l'amore comincia tu (1976). A song so good it was translated into four languages and was a hit for over three years.
Carrà was an artist who seemed to do it all: an actress (you may remember her from Von Ryan's Express), a singer, a TV presenter in Italy, Spain and Argentina as well as something of a fashion icon.
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Jun 11
Death Train (1993). Christopher Lee, Patrick Stewart and Pierce Brosnan in an Alistair MacLean movie? You have my full attention!
Death Train was an unfinished MacLean story, and after his death in 1987 it was completed by Alistair MacNeill and published in 1989. It's not typical MacLean, but it's pacey and action packed and the movie adaption is pretty solid - though Brosnan's American accent does waver a bit.
It was released as Detonator in some markets, with Brosnan and co-star Alexandra Paul reuniting in 1995 on its sequel Detonator II: Alistair MacLean's Night Watch.
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(There is some notable product placement in this film!)
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Ralph 124C 41 : A Romance Of The Year 2660 by Hugo Gernsback. The Stratford Company, 1925. Cover by Frank R. Paul.
Gernsback is better known for his magazines and his inventions, but his novel (first published in 1911) is genuinely interesting. Like his magazines it's crammed full of future predictions - television, videophones, tape recorders, radar, synthetic clothes, solar energy, space flight.
Alas it's not that well written. It's a plodding melodrama and critics have been very unkind to it. But it is a landmark in American science fiction and if you can get past the endless exposition it's a fascinating read. The 'future' really was first codified in the Edwardian age.
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