Yesterday’s Tomorrows: Popular Science archive available online

Paul Raven @ 05-03-2010

Retro covers from Popular Science MagazineHere’s a heads-up for anyone of a geeky bent – Wired reports that Popular Science has scanned nearly 140 years of its archived back issues and put them up for viewing on the intertubes, complete with all images and the original period advertising material. For free.

You can’t go directly to an issue to browse, but once you have arrived somewhere by search, there are no restrictions on scrolling around. You’ll also find a properly hyperlinked table of contents in each magazine. The early years are a little dry: I browsed an issue from 1902, and it made the average math textbook look like a Dan Brown novel (only better paced), so I’d recommend starting in the optimistic, tech-loving 1950s.

Of peripheral interest is the fact that PopSci has done this in partnership with Google Books…


The vintage Japanese science fiction art of Kazuaki Saito

Paul Raven @ 08-12-2008

Edo of Pink Tentacle fame has unearthed a bunch of ultra-pulpy cover illustrations from Japan’s prosaically-named SF Magazine. Produced by Kazuaki Saito, they pretty much sum up the way the future looked from a viewpoint set four decades back:

Science fiction magazine cover art by Kazuaki Saito

I wonder what the stories were like?