You can almost smell the stale greasy fumes in the air and the hear the metallic thrumming of the engines as you flip through the pages. This is space travel – 1950s style.
This space travel has more in common with a submarine than a Tesla or SpaceX. These spaceships are more like typewriters and lawnmowers than your iPhone.
The clunky space suits are cumbersome and ugly, except when worn by women. Then the unitarian suits somehow transform into slinky, formfitting fashion statements, hugging every curve of the women’s 50s hourglass shapes.
The brave astronauts of this day never dreamed of apps or coding, all they needed was a space-wrench, whatever that was, and a blowtorch to build or fix their spaceships in between intergalactic oil changes.
This is the vision of a sci future…from the unique vantage point of seventy-plus years ago and from the “other side of the pond”.
Ace designer Rian Hughes has done it again! His latest book, Rayguns & Rocketships, published by Korero Press is a space-age treat. In fact, the back cover of this book displays a logo/badge on the back signifying it to be a five-star Retro Scientific Thriller –complete with a “thumbs up”. This logo, presumably designed by Hughes, couldn’t be more spot-on. Continue reading “With Further Ado #225: The Rayguns and Rocketships of Rian Hughes”
