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Space[chat] 2000 To 2100
Bogart
Streetwise HerculesRegistered User, Moderator Mod Emeritus
Streetwise HerculesRegistered User, Moderator Mod Emeritus
So I think I've talked about this book before, but I'm old and senile so everything is new again. It's an imaginary history of spacecraft development over this century, written back in the late seventies. It's beautiful. The book details several dozen spaceships (military, commercial and scientific) against the backdrop of a three system war Earth found itself in sometime during the 21st century. They re-released the books recently, but instead of painted art used truly abysmal computer generated shit with all the charm of a petri dish brimming with old man's spunk.
You get a little potted history of the craft, why it was built, what impact it had, and a massive, glorious picture. All illustrations are in the Chris Foss style. The kind of thing that you could slap on an Isaac Asimov novel without a second thought. As a special treat it has lots of technobabble stats about armaments and propulsion systems like they were top trumps.
They have cool names like the Hornet, or the Piranha, and while their designs are probably very silly in a practical sense they look cool as shit. This is the Shark, a murderous little bastard whose surprise entry almost turned the war in Proxima Centauri's favour.
Here you can see some poor bastard in a tanker get absolutely ganked. Whatever those tubby little attack ships are, they should be nerfed in the next patch.
There's even a little section on mysterious alien ships encountered - these weird disc things, migrating cities no one can penetrate that move from pillar to pillar on a strange world.
Anyway, I like [chat]s where someone talks about a thing they like and shows pretty pictures so here's another.
You get a little potted history of the craft, why it was built, what impact it had, and a massive, glorious picture. All illustrations are in the Chris Foss style. The kind of thing that you could slap on an Isaac Asimov novel without a second thought. As a special treat it has lots of technobabble stats about armaments and propulsion systems like they were top trumps.
They have cool names like the Hornet, or the Piranha, and while their designs are probably very silly in a practical sense they look cool as shit. This is the Shark, a murderous little bastard whose surprise entry almost turned the war in Proxima Centauri's favour.
Here you can see some poor bastard in a tanker get absolutely ganked. Whatever those tubby little attack ships are, they should be nerfed in the next patch.
There's even a little section on mysterious alien ships encountered - these weird disc things, migrating cities no one can penetrate that move from pillar to pillar on a strange world.
Anyway, I like [chat]s where someone talks about a thing they like and shows pretty pictures so here's another.
Echo on
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What is this, a copychat?
the most beautiful puppies i have ever seen
Another Proximan weapon, the Tarantula. Used when the fight had moved on to their territory and their homeworld was under attack. Nasty little thing.
This is another one of the alien artifacts, a shipwreck. Tantalisingly, the wreckage of an old Earth craft was found inside. Spooky.
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Equal parts dream and nightmare, like you're on a beautiful walk but your guide just will not shut up and let you enjoy it.
The mayor, who initially added that motion in the first place, started talking about how doesn’t want to talk about removing people… however, where people are positioned is key and we need to talk about if people positioned appropriately. And my eyes nearly rolled out of their socket. I get so annoyed when people do that shit. Pretty much everyone other person managed to vote yes or no without inventing new concepts.
Looks like the rain is staying away for the first day of the test, SA have elected to bowl which I thinking is -goddamn brave- considering what England has done with run chases this summer.
Let's get it on!
60s and 70s sci fi and spaceship design was just great. And so colourful instead of all the boring shades of grey with maybe some led light strips
Wow. Only $13
It's kind of amazing how it looks ten times worse than Second Life did when I messed around with it ca goddamn 2006.
stuff like it having a "Consolidated Aerospace CA125M" drive? Fuck yes
I hate when games and stuff just have "laser gun" "laser gun 2"
no! Give me model names! Make a goddamn world, you fucks!
@Bogart !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I can get furniture again!
Working too many weekends from now until then so the idea of having a housewarming party combined with getting my friends to move a couch won't really work. But hey, I get to have my furniture.
edit: the idea here was not just "get people to move my furniture for me" it was "I don't really want my dad to move more furniture" moving here the first time basically wore out both my parents and I felt bad about it. Being sneaky is the only way to avoid that.
edit2: in case it wasn't clear: couch and dining table have been in the old apartment up until now to make it look nice.
There's a definite vibe from spaceship art of that era I love dearly. Most commonly found on SF book covers of the era, there's a weird double hit of both nostalgia and futurism about it. It's a spaceship, but you know the civilians inside are wearing flares.
This is a Heinlein book cover, and the illustration was also in the book in the OP, as one of the alien artifacts found. It also entered the news when a young artist essentially copied it, changed the colours, and received high praise for his cleverness, then criticism for, well, ripping off the original and not crediting it.
And it's just a sort of light blue grey, but it's weird looking. A fragment of a larger whole whose nature is mysterious and spooky in a way that spaceship design largely isn't.
Anyway, I love the style. There's a good reason Jodorowsky asked Chris Fosse to do lots of design work for his unmade Dune movie. I think the style has aged pretty well in a purely aesthetic sense, and more spaceships could do with bright colours. The Milano in GotG is quite nice.
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Oh shit. Straight to the top of my Christmas list.
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i'm amused because the value of the crypto went down in the 2 minutes it took me to copy all of the answers to the questions
Prices on eBay range from £20 to much higher, which is a bit silly, but you should be able to pick one up for the lower end of that range. There are a few others in the series as well, but the one in the OP is by far the best. The other one with the kind of tech detail you're after is the Starliners one, which is a lot rarer.
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we were super close to going fuck it and throwing some cash into bitcoin
which would have seen, well, stupid amounts of returns
would like to point out that I wish I was stupider and did so - because it seemed to me at the time as an incredibly dumb fucking thing made by insufferable nerds who don't know fuck about money
which is an analysis I agree with still, but I could have had a nice chunk of extra cash, taken from those insufferable nerds, if I hadn't caught on.
it still sounds fucking stupid but i could be a stupid millionaire
realistically i would have spunked it up the wall or lost the key or something so i'm not too heartbroken about it
how's the 40th anniversary reprint
it has a better looking spaceship on the front but it also comes with a warning that it was made by scanning the older book as the original artwork was lost
(which makes sense as the book seems to have been made mainly by compiling cover art - rather than commissioning a shitton of art for one obscure book for people who want fictional technical readouts back in the days when art was way more pricey)
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my friend who was most like, well come on it's not like we have critical expenses at this age, it'll be a laugh and did slap like a thousand or so into it did, of course, lose the key since, so