Tag: sci-fi

Categories
1950-1999

How to Watch Star Wars at Home in 1978

Starburst front cover
This magazine has a LOT to answer for...

Here’s another guest post, this time from Steve. He hasn’t got a blog or a website, despite the fact that he is well aware that he should have, considering he is a web developer and also hosts this site. And wrote this introduction.

A website for old and rare oddities you say? Well enough about me, here’s my guest post. Back in January 1978 a magazine debuted at my local newsagents, it was called STARBURST, and having recently seen the movie Star Wars (some of you may have heard of it) I persuaded my Dad to buy it for me.

Somehow I have managed to keep it. Sure the pages are yellowed and there are a few tears, but it has a mystical nostalgia to it. There are only a few articles – split between Star Wars and Star Trek (the 60’s TV series only of course) and I can’t say that I’ve ever actually read them in the past 36 years now that I think about it. I mainly looked at the pictures – a trait that’s remained with me I might add – and while the glossy colour shots of Star Wars captured the breathless excitement of the landmark motion picture in my young and impressionable five-year-old mind; it was the fascinating advertisements in the magazine that I pored over. The promise of re-watching Star Wars again in the comfort of my own home was almost irresistible; remember this was barely the dawn of the home video revolution, JVC and SONY had only just released portable VCRs, and terms like VHS and Betamax were Sci-Fi words. Movies were more of an event back then, as you saw them once in the cinema, and if you liked the film and wanted to see it again, you had to wait about five years, and then end up with an edited version on TV interrupted every half hour with commercials. See the film at home - only £165.22 for 20 minutes of footage and £827.36 for the projector - in today's money! But look at this – they actually sold Star Wars on film so you could see it at home. You had to buy a projector too mind, which they claimed were sold at “down to earth prices.” No amount of tantrums persuaded my dad to buy them of course. But look at some of the formats; 200′ spools of “highlights” – black and white – no sound – 8 minutes long – Hang on – This sounds amazing! I want to see these chopped edits of the original more than I want to see Episode VII – but look at the price of them. Historically adjusted inflation makes that £165 YELCO Sound Projector a whopping £827.36. And that special 400′ spool is now £165.22. So to see 20 minutes of Star Wars at home in 1978 would set you back £992.58; which is about £49.63 per minute! Compare that to the actual cinema price in 1978 – average of 93p for a ticket at the time, adjusted to £4.66 now – to watch the whole 121 minute movie. A snip at less then 4p a minute. Well, that actually made waiting until October 24th 1982 to see it on TV seem perfectly sensible. But the other adverts in that first issue of STARBURST also captured my imagination; a shady comics dealer, a fantasy bookstore, and how amazing was this; an incredible melting man! Was it a film or a TV show? There was no googling back then either in 1978.

This very magazine was my gateway drug into many things; aged six I was reading hard SF such as Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein, comics like 2000AD, and with a growing appetite for watching really bad horror movies. Just think; if my dad had not bought that 50p magazine – I might have turned out normal.

Categories
1950-1999 Future Predictions

2010 Living in the Future, 1972

2010 Living in the Future, Geoffrey Hoyle, 1972

Future predictions again, and this is the one I grew up with.

2010 Living in the Future, Geoffrey Hoyle, 1972
2010 Living in the Future, Geoffrey Hoyle, 1972

“2010 – Living in the Future” is a peaceful, soothing image of the future from 1972, by Geoffrey Hoyle, son of the eminent astronomer Fred Hoyle (the man who coined the term, “The Big Bang”, despite not believing in that theory himself).

I had this as a discarded library book as a child and it was one of my favourites. On the one hand, I was willing to believe that its predictions were very likely to come true. On the other, I kind of knew a lot of them wouldn’t as it would really involve the whole world being rebuilt anew, which seemed unlikely. Not only unlikely, but it was also an awful concept that old buildings, streets and the tangible traces of history would be destroyed.

It’s a product of its time in that a fairly communal style of living is hinted at, a 3 day week is still seen as the end product of technology taking over many aspects of life (if only!), and the reassuring, “it’s fine” vision of how things turn out is probably a reaction to the pessimism of the future that was pretty widespread at this point, after decades of US involvement in one war or another, and the image of nuclear war that hovered over the decade.

But it’s also very well done in many respects. Geoffrey Hoyle utterly gets the importance of computers in people’s everyday lives, in a way that even people working in the computer industry at the time didn’t always appreciate. Things like internet shopping, e-readers and watching films on computer are anticipated. Perhaps one day, school will be like this, all distance learning by webcam – although playtime would be pretty rubbish.

Incidentally, here in Liverpool, people cracked the multicoloured jumpsuit-the-whole-year-round thing way back in the 80s.

There’s a little catch up with Geoffrey Hoyle in 2010 here – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12058575

I didn’t realise they’d reprinted the book in 2010. A nice touch. And I find it very funny they reprinted it with the title 2011 instead, so it’s still in the future.

(It reminds me of the obscure 90s comedy series Focus North, where they predict that everyone in 2011 wears silver capes, swears a lot and has webbed hands, yet in a flashback to 2009, none of that had happened yet.)