Over at Paleo-Future, they have a scan of an article from the Februrary 12, 1922 issue of the Ogden Standard Examiner. Twitchy about predicting a more near-by future that might be flung back in his dotage, the author decided to predict the world of 11922 A.D.... a world in which sunken-chested bald men in jet packs zoom through the stratosphere to visit domed basilicas kept aloft on radioactive propulsor jets. Why would humanity make its cities so catastrophically disaster prone? A Captain Lawson ("of aerial fame") suggests that the inexorable impetus of human evolution will command us to build our cities at the top of the atmosphere, just as it commanded us to crawl upwards from the ooze of the deep sea floor and conquer land. Ah, the eerily accurate sooth saying of the randomly addressed ex-military man!

10,000 Years From Now [Paleo-Future]

The nixie tube is one of the oldest and retro-futuristic of digital display technologies: a glass tube (similar in appearance to a vacuum tube) containing a wire-mesh anode and multiple cathodes that, when powered, become glowing orange numbers. Artist Peter Jensen buys up old, space-race Soviet era Nixie-tubes and turns them into fantastically retro-futuristic digital clocks. A four digit Nixie Tube clock kit will cost you $135, or only $99 if you don't mind tearing apart crazy ol' grampa's non-functioning time machine for the stray parts, but you can go up to a six-digit aluminum model for $495. Gorgeous. These look like they were just removed from the dash panel of Flash Gordon's 1950s-era rocket ship. I want one.

TubeClock [Official Site via Retro-Thing]

Source: Dog's Faint

Flickr pools don't populate themselves, and without them, fastidious bloggers actually have to scrounge content for a living. So as a friendly reminder, Boing Boing Gadgets has three Flickr pools, each a pure and nurturing hollow in which the seed of an image might grow into a full-fledged post. Our pools are:

• Electro Selectro — Vintage ads and inserts from the far flung, four-color past!

• In The Year 2000 — Our Retro-Futurism Pool. Discover the time-machines dreamed up by 17th Century Polynesians!

• Boing Boing Gadgets — our stock image pool.

This week, we'll be high-lighting some of the better images to come in from In The Year 2000, so why not join up and deposit something retro-futuristic for the smug bemusement of us, your fellow post-modernists?

In this video, the man responsible for creating the wireframe images of the Death Star and trench that were used in the briefing scenes of A New Hope explains how he used real computers to "digitize" images. I'm sure I'm not the first to make this observation, but it's really hilarious how futuristic Star Wars seems with its space ships and laser swords, the latest versions of which were wholly created by computers.

Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks has acquired the rights to 'Ghost in the Shell,' reports Variety, to be made into a 3D live-action movie. Above, the intro to the original anime movie (based on an earlier manga), which includes quite a bit of cartoon female nudity. Should be a corker. Even bad Spielberg sci-fi movies are fun to watch once.

DreamWorks to make 'Ghost' in 3-D [Variety via Complex]

Previously • RED Scarlet 3K camcorder, James Cameron on the future of digital cinema, and trying to grok all these pixels [BBG]

I used to have a Kenner Millennium Falcon. I don't anymore. What had seemed like a wonderful idea in the feverish mind of a hyperactive kindergartner (namely, to simulate HyperDrive by tying a jump rope to one of leg of the Correllian freighter and then whipping it at high velocity around my head) ended with my father chasing me around the house with a bottle of Jack and spitting out teeth. The subsequent week spent tied to a radiator with the very same jump rope gave me some time to mull things over: actually, I don't think I like Star Wars very much, after all.

But Hasbro's new, two-and-a-half foot Star Wars Legacy Collection Millennium Falcon toy — coupled with my father's life-long incarceration — has me rethinking the resolution. This is sexy. Consider also: this is boss. From the pivoting gunner stations to the secret smuggling compartments and a light-up dejarik table, this is everything a little kid — eager to escape in a galaxy far, far away the drunken abuses of a father who has named each and every one of his knuckles after the brothers and sisters he had replaced — could ever want in a toy spaceship. But, of course, that poor, Dickensian whelp will never be able to afford this when its released in July, because toys aren't for kids anymore.

High-Res Scans Here [Galactic Hunter via Gizmodo]

If I'm parsing this Spiegel article correctly, they're comparing this collection of 39 strange vehicles as things that look like they could have come out of Star Wars. Ironically, some of the featured retro vehicles are war machines, including some hard-edged German items, which undoubtedly affected the visual style of some of the original trilogy's design. Or maybe they're saying these things inspired Star Wars in the first place. I can suss out the meaning of words in German, but all the connective grammar is lost on me.

Die Ahnen von Star Wars [Spiegel.de] (Thanks, Monad!)

Apparently a search for "Starship Enterprise" in Google Maps brings up this office complex that looks like a place where workers boldly go. It appears to be a user tag, not an official Google prank.

"Starship Enterprise" [Maps.Google.com via Reddit]

I'm currently reading Paul Stamets Mycelium Running, a book about how mushrooms can be used to clean our environment, repel insects, and cure diseases. I tripped over this interesting bit of lore in Chapter 9:

Frank Herbert, the well-known author of the Dune books, told me his technique for using [mushroom] spores. When I met him in the early 1980s, Frank enjoyed collecting mushrooms on his property near Port Townsend, Washington.

...

Frank went on to tell me that much of the premise of Dune–the magic spice (spores) that allowed the bending of space (tripping), the giant worms (maggots digesting mushrooms), the eyes of the Fremen (the cerulean blue of the Psilocybe mushroom), the mysticism of the female spiritual warriors, the Bene Gesserits (influenced by tales of Maria Sabina and the sacred mushroom cults of Mexico)—came from his perception of the fungal life cycle, and his imagination was stimulated through the experience with the use of the magic mushroom.

For what it's worth, most of Mycelium Running has little to do with psychedelic mushrooms—not that there would be anything wrong with that—but instead focuses more on the technical details about the growth cycle and practical uses of a wide array of fungi.

Image: Nunavut

INTERN DUNN – If you'll direct your attention to our "In the Year 2000" Flickr pool, you can observe this lovely EPCOT painting in its natural habitat. Consider the rays of light as they guide your eyes from the majestic central globe to the happy, multicultural crowd experiencing The Future.

Once you've done so, be sure to browse through the many new photos at our "Electro Selectro" and "Boing Boing Gadgets Stock Images Flickr pools. Get in on the action by posting your own, too! It's fun and will help you live longer.

A monument to beloved Japanese giant mecha series Gundam has been erected at the Kamiigusa train station in Shinjuku, Tokyo, the same neighborhood in which Gundam producer Sunrise, Inc. is located.

Gundam is most famous for the loyalty it displayed years ago, having been left at Kamiigusa station by its pilot, bound for war but sadly never returning. The mecha waited at the station every day for its master's face, becoming a friendly sight to commuters, before wearing down its main power core after 3,000 short years.

Full-size image [Yomiuri.co.jp via Alafista via Kotaku]

Okay, watch a little bit of this. It's the original version. Just for context.

Then watch fan tribute, which is a work of majesty, and has really nothing at all to do with gadgets, but trust me, it'll be fine.

TV in Japan has a second tribute video, sort of re-mix, which might be even better.

Cat’s Guy - The Ultimate in Anime Fan Tributes [TVinJapan.com]

Spy shots from the set of the upcoming Star Trek movie show two items of note: the Starfleet-issue miniskirts are back (and about time!) and the three-wheel Aptera Hybrid might be making a cameo in the movie. An Aptera can be seen parked in the shade, perhaps prepping for a lazy background drive-by of the courtyard. I think it's a perfect fit, really. Part of what makes me adore the Aptera's styling is its call back to the clean lines of the late '50s and early '60s, which should work just dandy in a movie that appears to be acknowledging at least a little of the '60s style that influenced the original.

Why do these shots from the filming of "Corporate Headquarters" look suspiciously like the Starfleet Academy? [AintItCool.com]

Previously • Aptera Three-Wheeled Electric Car May Reach Production [BBG]
• PopMech Gets First Drive of the Aptera Electric Car [BBG]
• Aptera's Steve Fambro Interviewed About Three-Wheeled Egg Car [BBG]

No details yet, but an aide has reported that Arthur C. Clarke, luminous fiction author and progenitor of geosynchronous communication satellites (among other novel notions), has passed away in Sri Lanka at 90.

Arthur C. Clarke dies at age of 90 in Sri Lanka [LATimes/AP]

This 1977 Dodge Tradesman van, available for sale on eBay, has a custom Star Wars mural painted on the side. The van appears to be pretty much falling apart, sadly, but perhaps that's why the bids have only gone just over $1,000. It is a really nice paint job, though. It's a shame that the painted van has fallen out of favor, putting thousands of skilled airbrushers out on the street.

Auction Page [eBay.com via Star Wars blog]

Trademork is reporting that Twentieth Century Fox, rights-holders to the Futurama brand, has trademarked "Slurm," the once-fictional monstrously addictive beverage made from the secretions of a giant worm Slurm Queen harvested by singing Grunka-Lunkas. The trademark covers, "carbonated and non-carbonated soft drinks; fruit drinks; fruit juices; mineral and aerated water; bottled drinking water; energy drinks; syrups and powders for making soft drinks and other beverages, namely soft drinks, fruit drinks and tea; coffee-flavored soft drinks; Ramune (Japanese soda pops); powders used in the preparation of isotonic sports drinks and sports beverages."

I'm waiting on New Slurm, myself.

Slurm [Trademork.com]

A BBtv exclusive sneak peek inside an Alternate Reality Game (or 'ARG') revolving around the storyline of the Fox tv series Sarah Connor Chronicles (and the Terminator movie trilogy). The footage describes the development of a camera from Enitech Labs that can take pictures of a future event by capturing faster-than-light "tachyon" particles. When pictures of ordinary scenery foretell post-apocalyptic outcomes, the developers find themselves in a race against time to publicize their findings and warn the public of the horrors to come...

More exclusive installments to come on BBtv. (Thanks, Bart Cheever / millionsofus!)

A funerary vendor called "Eternal Image" has licensed the Star Trek brand to provide a line of urns and caskets inspired by the sci-fi series. The first two products are an urn, a metallic sphere held aloft by three Starfleetesque buttresses, and a casket shaped like a photon torpedo. The urn will be $800 when it's released in the middle of this year, while the casket has no price as yet. Expect the casket to be several thousand dollars, for sure.

My preference, since I don't think I've made it clear before, would be to stuffed to overflowing with lilac seeds, doused in beer, and buried in a pine box packed with fertilizer. I'm sure that violates state and federal corpse handling procedure, so you have my permission to steal my body and bury it in an unmarked grave.

Product Page [EternalImage.com via Gearlog]

Prof. Michael Stoll has scanned in these wonderful Syd Mead illustrations, commissioned by U.S. Steel in the early '60s as promotional materials, and added them to the Paleo-Future/Boing Boing Gadgets "In the Year 2000" Flickr pool. I would kill to get my hands on a set of these.

This ambulance is taking me to the hospital where I will be impregnated with Syd Mead's babies.

Christ almighty! Syd Mead invented AT-ATs!

USS - a portfolio of probabilities [Flickr.com via Paleo-Future]

Jason "ToyOtter" Geyer was a toy designer who got a chance to pitch Lucasfilm right before Star Wars: Episode I came out. Most of their ideas didn't make it to market, but the concepts they've scanned in and put online are hilarious. I can't believe Lucasfilm hasn't done a Jabba the Hutt beanbag.

To say we were excited is an understatement. However, there were a few problems. One, since we were not yet an approved vendor to Lucasfilm, we had to use the Original Trilogy to concept with as we couldn’t be shown anything from Episode One. Lucasfilm would review our concepts and let us know if anything could apply to the new movie (this was a painful process that involved discarding far more ideas than the ones that were kept). Two, it was only a year away from the release of Episode One, and most manufacturing lead times were anywhere from 18-12 months to get the product made and to stores. But beggars can’t be choosers, and we hit the ground running.

Rejected! A long, long time ago… [ActionFigureInsider.com] (Thanks, Matt & Michael!)

Here's a clip from "Ikarie XB 1," a Soviet-era sci-fi flick from Czechoslovakia in 1963, in which cosmonauts explore a derelict space station. I'm watching it now. It's gorgeous. I want a copy of this—and I can have one, it seems, from XploitedCinema.com. ($30, but it's in PAL.) I would also like my apartment to look like these sets. I'l get to work on that.

From the Youtube description:

The film is generally apolitical, except for this remarkable scene, in which the explorers enter a derelict 20th Century space craft, littered with evidence of capitalist immorality. The visuals are striking. Corpses of tuxedo-clad, gambling westerners, their bodies preserved by open vacuum. The crew killed by their own chemical hand-weapons as they fought over dwindling oxygen. The ship laden with nuclear weapons -- still active after centuries.

Exploring derelict space ship in rare Soviet-style SF film [Youtube] (Thanks, Brownlee!)

It's been nine years since the first LEGO Star Wars models were released and LEGO has asked the readers of The Brothers Brick which sets they'd like to see as 10th anniversary models for 2009. You can leave your suggestions in their comments.

What set would you want for the 10th anniversary of LEGO Star Wars? [Brothers-Brick.com]

There's a contest going on in the LEGO fan community, with the aim to remix Star Wars in steampunk style. Don't ask me why I haven't been posting them all up here. I don't have an answer!

But I hope this design by Mark Stafford makes up for it. The more I look at his reimagined Naboo fighter, the more I'm amazed. The bone-like front lip made from Bionicle pieces. The chromed pipes coming out of the side of the turbines. The amazing puffs of steam coming out of the front boiler, made from ice cream elements. And in a stroke of genius, he's replaced the R2 unit with a monkey.

Mark Stafford, please build me a LEGO steampunk Star Wars woman so that I may marry her and make dozens of meaty minifig babies.

Royal Naboo AirForce 1 - Fighter Aircraft with Astro the Navigation Monkey [Brickshelf via The Brothers Brick]

Could the cheap Chinese manufacturers be sniffing out our propensity for steampunk computer peripherals? This "Driverless Webcam" has an obviously anachro-fantastic design, although its $12 price belies its plastic construction. Still: shiny! (For me it's less about the admittedly attractive top and more about the articulated arm. If I owned my residence, I'd put every screen I have on some sort of counter-levered arm, and perhaps keyboards and other peripherals, too.)

Don't let that cheap price lure you, though. Apparently the shipping starts around $26, so you might want to wait until someone imports a crate of these things via tramp steamer.

Product Page [ChinaVIsion.com via Brass Goggles]

While the three-wheeled "Fascination" looks to have been constructed in full-sized prototype form in the early '70s, its engine, a "Nobel Gas Plasma Engine" that needed no fuel to operate 60,000 miles, was not. (Wonder why!)

A reader to PopCult magazine offered this first-hand experience:

It was a very cool car. I even rode in it once or twice! Quite a revolutionary design, too. It had air-filled rubber shock absorbers like on today's buses. It had a mid-engine design, behind the back seats, and the engines were going to be from Renault–I think they were Wankel or rotary engines. I don't remember anything about "Nobel Gas-Plasma Engines" that the website mentions. Because it was mid-engine, the front of the car was very light. Supposedly, if it got hit broadside, it would just spin around on the back wheels.

Because it only had three wheels, you could drive it into a ditch and you'd never lose contact with any of the wheels and the road. You could also turn the front wheel almost perpendicular to the car, which meant you could turn nearly in its own radius, and you could parallel park with about 12 inches of total clearance. It got 40 or so mpg.

The Fascination may have been inspired by a similar design from Buckminster Fuller. Fuller's car, the "Dymaxion," was designed in 1933. At least three were constructed. It sat ten plus the driver, weighed less than 1,000 pounds, and got between 30 and 50 MPG. Three prototypes were built. Unlike the Fascination, the Dymaxion's third wheel was in the back, a design it shares with the upcoming Aptera electric and hybrid vehicles.

A space age transportation innovation [PopCultMag.com]

[via Core77]

Previously: Aptera Three-Wheeled Electric Car May Reach Production [BBG]

ThinkGeek is now selling this Chewbacca Plush Backpack for $40. Please do not ever wear it out of the house.

Obviously it's too small to be the real Chewie, but it got me thinking. There's another thing we can hate Ewoks for: obviating the revelation of baby wookies. I bet baby wookies smell fantastic, like flowers just on the edge of rot.

Catalog Page [ThinkGeek.com via Gizmodo via Sci-Fi Tech]