The Future of the Past and Present
Stephen Worth says:
When people of the past envisioned what the inhabitants of other planets might be like, they conceived of gods and spirits who lived lives like those of the heroes and villains found in fables and ancient myths. Around the turn of the 20th century, mankind's conception of the world underwent a huge shift. Advances in technology were occurring at an unprecedented rate. These changes affected the way people lived their lives and the way they thought about their place in the universe. People began to think there might be no limit to the number of amazing changes technology was going to bring to them in the next hundred years.ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive: Our Dreams of the FutureThey were right.
Today at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, I posted an article on how visionary animators like Ward Kimball and Walt Disney were responsible for putting a man on the moon. Yes, we have Walt to thank for our space program! The post contains a complete illustrated article by the father of modern space art, Chesley Bonestell, and clips from Disney's landmark TV program, "Mars and Beyond." Enjoy!
the latest
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Yes, we have Walt to thank for our space program!
...and Arthur Clarke and Issac Asimov and a whole host of others, but sure I'll be happy to throw Walt Disney in with the rest of them.
Far from being just another literary sub-genre, SF has played (and can continue to play) a really fundamental role in human culture. Sometimes I think it's the most important kind of literature we have.
I'm really annoyed by how he cherry picks four or five examples out of fifty years of material to dig at modern science fiction. And I'm actually insulted by the last paragraph.
And what's with mentioning 2001, then bemoaning the lack of hard science?
Argh. I should have learned by now not to let things on the Internet get to me. Time to go blow off steam. I think I'll watch Primer; maybe this time I'll get it with the timeline handy.
Nosehat, I intended to mention the fact that in the 50s, cartoonists and illustrators often rubbed shoulders at cocktail parties with rocket scientists and science fiction writers. They considered themselves all cut from the same cloth, just with different specialities. I couldn't find a place to put it in the outline though. I agree with you about the importance of science fiction. Nature has the best special effects of all.
Chevan, I covered Star Wars, Blade Runner, Alien, and ET. I suppose I could have commented about robots in leather jackets on motorcycles, Richard Dryfuss making mountains out of mashed potatoes and whatever the hell the Matrix was all about... but I figured I had already made my point. My favorite hard science in 2001 is the ending.
I forgot my favorite hard science in Close Encounters- Aliens have the power to make TOYS COME TO LIFE!
The image for this post is rather Frauenfelderesque.
The Coronet article about a vacation to Venus is like the ultimate Bruce McCall spoof.
THANK YOU!
I watched this all the time on the Disney channel as a kid, and almost forgot all about it!
Antinous@5: Thank you, Antinous. In my dreams.
There are only 6 more years until 2015, and if scientists have seen Back To The Future II, then hopefully I will be able to purchase a hoverboard by then.
ASIFA, you're making the assumption that space travel IS hard science. With the nearest known extrasolar planet still 10 lightyears away, nothing von Braun had in mind could get there in anything like a human lifetime (Voyager might go that far in 16,000 years). And I reckon the ISS has taught us that 2001-esque stations are infeasible using rockets to carry them.
But is there any evidence of this link between cartoonists and rocket scientists? I'd totally read that post.
There's a link that I wanted to mention, but couldn't find any information on...
I interviewed Bob Givens (the animator who designed Bugs Bunny) and he said that he worked on a film directed by Frank Capra designed to convince Congress to create a program to experiment with rockets. Bob said that the film included some of his best work, but he hasn't seen it since he completed it. Supposedly, the film was only shown to members of the House and Senate. It isn't listed on Capra's IMDB page. Does anyone have info on this film? It would have come sometime between the last "Why We Fight" and the first "Bell Science Hour". Bob said he thought it was around 1949 or 1950.
In #11 "ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive" (whom I imagine to be Stephen Worth) writes:
Bob said that the film included some of his best work, but he hasn't seen it since he completed it. Supposedly, the film was only shown to members of the House and Senate. It isn't listed on Capra's IMDB page. Does anyone have info on this film?
Intriguing.
Frank Capra's papers are at the Wesleyan University Cinema Archives in Middletown, Connecticut, USA. I don't see finding aids online, but maybe someone at or near Wesleyan could chase down the facts about this film. As a space history buff AND an animation history buff, I would love to know more.
Re: connecticut
Have we ranged too far out of general interest to get an update to bb? If found, this would certainly generate a doctorate for somebody.
this exists
http://www.cataroo.com/hgivens.html
Q: What project or work has given you the most professional satisfaction?
BG: Well, there were a bunch of them. I mean different things. Like for instance the early "Termite Terrace," the UPAs, and the Fifties where I did nothing but commercials and industrial films. We did a thing for NASA, which raised the money for the eventual moon trip. I worked with Frank Capra for a year. We designed capsules, the suits, the whole bit, from imagination. Then NASA and the engineers built it.
@#3
>Chevan, I covered Star Wars, Blade Runner, Alien, and ET. I suppose I could have commented about robots in leather jackets on motorcycles, Richard Dryfuss making mountains out of mashed potatoes and whatever the hell the Matrix was all about... but I figured I had already made my point.
And what point is that, exactly? You're dropping names and expecting me to see some common thread.
If you want to know why people stopped dreaming about space travel, I can tell you - it's because we did it, and we found there's nothing out there. There's nothing to dream about. Nada. Zip. The closest any living person will ever come is seeing images reconstructed from orbital telescopes or probes flung out into the abyss.
Regarding your comments on popular science fiction becoming banal - life is banal. People aren't dreaming fantastic dreams about technology because that technology is no longer fantastic. Most of those same elements of technology have been integrated in some form into everyday life and knowledge.
Spaceships are in-elegant heaps because people realized there's no reason to give it swoops and curves and gleams - there's nobody out there in space to see it and it's terribly inefficient.
It's easy to dream up a life-like robot when nobody knows step one of building a robot, but that same fiction you're deriding was created in an era when it wasn't out of the question for someone to get a hand on a computer in real life and come to their own conclusions about where the technology is headed.
If you really want to see what people are dreaming up about the future, stop looking at movies and popular entertainment and start looking at videogames. Go play Mass Effect. Sure, it's not hard science, but neither are "fantastic creatures made of crystal that chew the landscape into wild filagrees."
Culture in general is in a sorry state because it's "terribly inefficient" to attain a high level of skill, give audiences more than they require or offer a constructive and meaningful comment on life along with the "product". Music, dance, the arts, drama- it's all the same. Science fiction isn't the only thing that's been made efficiently generic, trivial and bland. Unfortunately, we reap just what we sow. That was the point of my article.
asifa, you make the same mistake that ppl who describe seagulls as 'flying rats' do.
What's common isn't generic, trivial, and bland. What's common has succeeded. there are more reasons to accept the conventional wisdom than there are to reject it--that's why it's conventional.
If u want to be an artist, that's fine. If u want to do science, it's another thing.
Having spent Saturday morning googling, I claim the mystery film is Rendezvous in Space, an 18-minute short made for a Hall of Science exhibit at the 1964 New York World's Fair.
This contradicts the stated 1949-1950 timeframe, so I could be wrong. But it fits other facts.
Capra's notes on the production are in Box 36 of his papers at Wesleyan. (Thanks, James Burkhart Gilbert and Google Books!)
I might have known.
Rendezvous in Space is on Youtube: Part 1 and Part 2 .
It employs multiple styles of animation, along with live action. In Part 2, the screen goes black for two minutes-- though there is still a soundtrack of astronaut chatter between a space station and a shuttle-- as the audience's attention was directed to life-size spacecraft models enacting the rendezvous over their heads.
Danny Thomas, the MC and narrator, does man-in-the-street interviews with a bunch of familiar character actors in this 18-minute movie, though no credits are offered. Cartoon voices include Mel Blanc, Jim Backus, and Paul Frees-- but then, in those days, those guys were in everything.
Comment #19 was me. I thought I was logged in.