The shoulder pad—whose origins lay in the protective padding used in military uniforms—first became a feature of female fashion in the build-up to and during the Second World War. Perhaps in response to the militarization of society then underway, its expressionist lines were introduced by prominent designers like Elsa Schiaparelli, whose work was heavily influenced by the surrealism of Cocteau and Dalí…
As the 1970s drew to a close, the appetite for science fiction-related material of any type and in any form (though preferably of low price) was such that its effects were visible in every field: the post-Star Wars windfall admitted all comers…
“Solo Me Muevo Por Dinero” is the work of Spanish brothers Xeno and Tucho Baladon, known collectively as Xalan. The Euro disco duo released only two 12” singles, this and 1987’s Revolution Without Solution. The acquisitive, upwardly-mobile young urban professionals who became known as Yuppies in the early 1980s made their appearance in Spain at the tail end of an explosion of popular creativity…
Of all the visual shorthand for a particular type of outmoded futurism, one of the most immediately recognizable—like the chrome lettering with which it is often paired—must be the light grid. Usually depicted as a network of glowing straight lines receding in perspective against a black background, occasionally with the outlines of mountains or the blush of dawn visible on the horizon…
Following the huge success of Steven Spielberg’s 1977 Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the West’s fascination with unidentified flying objects returned with renewed vigor…
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…
