“Rabies Is a Killer” Poster, Circa 1977
With endemic labor disputes, recession, and social upheaval threatening from within, the Britain of the late 1970s and early 1980s increasingly saw itself as under siege from external threats…
“By the Time I’m a Parent”: The Poignant Prophecy of Boards of Canada’s “Energy Warning”
Our bailiwick here at We Are The Mutants is the often weird pop culture of the Cold War period. From our perspective, “Energy Warning,” the eleventh track on Scottish electronic music duo Boards of Canada’s landmark 2002 LP Geogaddi, is an artifact of a future time. But Boards of Canada’s own artistic and indeed ontological territory is the lost, forgotten, and abandoned…
‘Land of the Lost’: An Illustrated Timeline
By Brother Bill
This timeline attempts to chronicle key events from the original Land of the Lost series, which ran for three seasons from 1974-1976. Key events include the introduction of a new character or location, any traveling through time and/or space via time doorways or other paranormal means, events that altered the geography or climate of the Land of the Lost itself…
Stonehenge Stereo Speakers, Circa 1975
Along with Atlantis, the Bermuda Triangle, and several ancient monoliths attributed to ancient astronauts in Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods? (1968), Stonehenge became a symbol of occult mystery in the 1970s…
Sid and Marty Krofft’s ‘Land of the Lost’: Not a Routine Expedition
By Brother Bill
Three hominid creatures, possibly mankind’s evolutionary ancestors, creep through the brush in a primeval forest, drawn by an otherworldly sound. They come upon an obelisk standing in a clearing, its symmetrical perfection defying nature. They are awestruck. They want to touch the smooth surface but are afraid…
“And in the Darkness Bind Them”: The First ‘Lord of the Rings’ Paperbacks and the Making of Fantasy
By K.E. Roberts
In the summer of 1965, as the first U.S. troops put boots on the ground in Vietnam, a gathering swell of young, educated, dissident Americans discovered a then obscure epic fantasy written by an Oxford don—a devout Catholic and World War I veteran—between 1937 and 1949…
“Biotronic Man” Stickers, 1977
As the 20th century grew more precarious, humans often found comfort in the idea of incorporating “superior” technology into their all-too-fragile flesh and blood…
‘Spacewar!’ and the Birth of Video Games
By J.G. Newman
Spacewar! (1962) was the first video game the way that Little Richard was the first rock star. Both wrote a fairly complete rulebook for a future worldwide obsession, yet were known to such niche (or, in Richard’s case, unfairly marginalized) audiences that they now play footnote to the Pongs and Presleys of history…
‘Pops In Space’ by John Williams and the Boston Pops, 1980
John Williams cut his teeth as a composer for B-movies and TV series in the 1950s; his creative partnerships with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas in the 1970s, beginning with Jaws (1975), catapulted him into super-stardom…
The Corviale Housing Project
Known colloquially as the Serpentone (“big snake”), the Corviale is a vast housing development on the outskirts of Rome originally intended to house some 8,500 inhabitants in three structures dominated by a single, kilometer-long, eleven-story block…
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