As worries about the possibility of nuclear war spiked in the early 1980s, anxiety and anger began to surface in many of the arts, including British punk music. Punk had been politicized since the movement’s inception and many of those involved were, initially at least, informed by the experience of the British art schools…
1982 was the year The Future began to supplant The Past. It began with Time magazine’s claim that “Video Games Are Blitzing the World,” and ended with the home computer being made the publication’s “Machine of the Year” (allegedly bringing Steve Jobs, who coveted the title, to tears)…
By Richard McKenna and K.E. Roberts
It ought to be easy to be glib about After the Bomb. A “young adult” book from the mid-’80s about nuclear war is surely bursting with pastel-clad teens exchanging Valley Girl dialogue and adjusting their melting shoulder pads in the white heat of international brinkmanship…
In the rapidly changing, highly prosperous world in which they found themselves after the Second World War, American parents began to seek more modern sources of information regarding the best way to rear their offspring…
Originally designed by Douglas Malewicki, an American aerospace engineer and eclectic inventor, the object of this satirical simulation of cataclysmic nuclear war was to be sole survivor, although final retaliatory strikes often eliminated all players in a deadly chain reaction…
The International Radiation Symbol or Ionizing Radiation Trefoil Warning Symbol was created at the University of California Berkeley Radiation Laboratory in 1946…
“Brace yourself for an exciting, realistic sight and sound journey into another world…” Such was the promise emblazoned on the star-spangled blue packaging of the AudiSee titles, a series of “stereo dramatizations,” science-fiction audiobooks on cassette, each accompanied by a glossy, full-color illustrated booklet…
This advertisement for the 3rd Festival for Mind Body Spirit appeared in Alpha magazine (subtitled “Probes the Paranormal”) in 1979. Its promise of “Psychic phenomena, UFO’s [sic], Earth Mysteries and more” was a slight shift in emphasis from the event’s official poster…
In 1989 veteran illustrator and concept designer Ralph McQuarrie was commissioned to produce a series of illustrations for Isaac Asimov’s Robot Visions, a collection of essays and short stories and a companion volume to Asimov’s 1986 short story collection Robot Dreams…
After a partial nuclear meltdown occurred at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant only days before the release of a 1979 film discussing just that possibility, the term “China Syndrome”—used by nuclear power experts to describe a hypothetical scenario in which an overheating reactor core melted its way to the other side of the planet—quickly passed into common usage…
We Are the Mutants 