Retro-Future Genre Writer's Guide

How the world was supposed to be: A guide for writers and artists

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Introduction

From 1920s through the 1950s people had a great desire for an optimistic future. Their visionaries gave us a rich legacy of artwork, concepts, and ideas. They forecasted life in the world of the distant future in 2016.

These visions were based on projections from what they knew. They got close to what we have presently (except flying cars). Retro-future (aka retro-futurism) is similar to the world today; only it's the way they envisioned it would be.

This genre is related to science fiction, social science fiction, pulp fiction, golden age science fiction, steampunk, dieselpunk, and contemporary fiction.

Retro-future is a clean, positive, optimistic genre. Unfortunately, our media is saturated with dark, violent, and sensual content; our world has little hope. People today want a more hopeful future, and wish they had a flying car.

This genre is particularly suited to visual media. The visionaries left us a huge body of artwork.

These notes provide a consistent and well-researched guide to the classic Retro-future genre. The closer you stick to it, the more the notes can help you. They can also help with related genres, particularly social science fiction and dieselpunk.


Terminology

"We" and "our" usually refers to the present real world.

"They" and "their" usually refers to the alternate present Retro-future.

"The visionaries" refers to the people from the 1920s to 1950s who imagined the future.

"You" and "your" usually refer to the writer or artist.


Defining Attributes

Optimism

Optimism is the essence of Retro-future. There are enough jobs, food, resources, and opportunities. The visionaries knew there would always be poor people, but they envisioned a future where a hard-working man could succeed.

Optimism does not mean utopia. There can be plenty of tension, conflict, and drama in this genre.

Rockets, Space stations, and Moon bases

They envisioned rocket flight as more affordable and routine than it turned out to be. Any major corporation or second-world country can have space rockets. First-world countries can have a space station. Big countries can have a moon base.

Cargo is flung into orbit by super guns. Research the engineer Gerald Bull for details. Some of these guns could be magnetic coil guns, but the Bull design is much easier to implement.

Some of your characters can have jobs in space, even mundane ones like astro-welder or moon-miner.

Lessons learned: A small change in launch cost makes a noticeable difference in a space-age society. Also, if someone puts Gerald Bull's super gun together on a mountain in Ecuador, the cost of launching small satellites will go way down (and our world will change a little).

Flying cars

Flying cars are expensive. Most middle-class families can't afford one. But everyone wants one.

Flying car prototypes have been around since the 1920s. The visionaries thought they would be practical and affordable by now.

It's a good idea to give a flying car to some of your heroes.

Lessons learned: Motorcars change society when the middle class can have them. Everyone will want flying cars, but they will be too expensive to transform society. Can anyone say Itec, Terrafugia or Moller Skycar?

Mega-skyscrapers

Buildings continually increased in height from the 1880s until the 1930s as materials and construction technology improved.  The visionaries assumed that the 50-year trend would continue.

A mega-skyscraper goes up a couple hundred floors. Since it covers multiple city blocks, the city street grid continues through tunnels at ground level.

A few mega-skyscrapers will be in the heart of downtown in large cities. There will be regular skyscrapers all around them.

Some of your characters may live or work in such buildings. It would make sense for some of your urban characters to work in mega-skyscrapers.

No solid-state or semiconductor technology

Solid-state semiconductors, transistors, and integrated circuits were a nice surprise. There is no such technology in the Retro-future genre; the visionaries never saw it coming. Where we use a transistor too small to see, they would use a relay, vacuum tube, or mechanism.

Vacuum tubes are fragile power hogs. Most of them were thumb sized. Anything using them will either plug into the wall or have big batteries with short life. Tubes need a few minutes to warm up. Miniature vacuum tubes are more expensive, but can be as small as 3mm by 10mm tall (the size of a pencil eraser). Military tubes can be smaller yet, but much more expensive.

Relays don't use as much power, but can only turn on and off. They can't control a voltage or current like a vacuum tube can, and aren't as fast.

Mechanical devices are big, heavy, and slow compared to electronic ones.

Their electronic devices can do most things ours can, but are much bigger and use a lot more power. They cost more, so people have less of them.

Their controls have knobs and fewer buttons. Control panels are simple in design. No cluttered features to bog down the user. Some equipment takes more skill to operate.

It's a good idea for some of your characters to work with this interesting technology.

We have an art form called Retrotronics, where electronic devices are built using pre-semiconductor technology. It can be a source of inspiration.

Our silicon revolution had a major effect on business, electronics, communications, computers, software, user interfaces, and embedded systems.

Lessons learned: The silicon revolution had a widespread effect on our society. Semiconductors are everywhere. Surprisingly, the difference is not profound. Semiconductors make many things smaller, less expensive, and more capable; but there are few things we do that wouldn't be possible. The Internet is one of those things.

The visionaries' moral outlook

The visionaries predicted that the traditional culture and morality they knew would continue; only it would work better (they expected problems like civil rights, crime, and depravity to improve).

Most media from the 1920s to the 1950s avoided graphic sex and violence. Most of the heinous deeds of villains were "off camera". These people did not envision a future with media depicting the things ours does, and the visionaries would be repulsed by it. Thus the Retro-future genre has clean, family friendly content. There can be plenty of drama, just nothing disturbing.

As a consequence, the Retro-future genre is incompatible with horror, graphic violence, sexually explicit scenes, dark anti-heroes, and so forth.

Classic Retro-future vs. Liberal Retro-future and Retro-science fiction

These notes detail classic Retro-future. A liberal interpretation of the Retro-future genre includes any future envisioned in any time period. Many of these feature flying cars, moon bases, mega-skyscrapers, and no semiconductors. Many are optimistic and have old-fashioned morality. 

Classic science fiction made little attempt to predict life in the future. It usually explored how one facet of science might pan out.

Classic science fantasy and old comic books can be futuristic, but made few predictions.

Similar genres

Steampunk tells stories in a science fiction future implemented partly with industrial revolution era technology, partly with science fiction tech, and partly with ours.  Imagine coal-burning sky-battleships with steam engines, big guns, radar, anti-gravity lifters, and big rivets. Retro-future is optimistic and uses parts of the visionaries' conservative culture, while steampunk is rebellious and dark.
It's a good idea to pick most of your modern and science fiction technology from Victorian science fiction (Wells, Shelly, Verne, etc), possibly implemented with 1890's technology. Your power sources are limited to clockwork and steam (possibly only reciprocating coal-fired engines). Stationary power can be hydropower. Culture is a blend of Victorian and modern. This document can help.

Dieselpunk (sometimes called decodence) is similar to steampunk, but uses World War II technology instead of industrial revolution technology. War is a natural theme for it. These notes can help dieselpunk writers quite a bit.
It's a good idea to pick most of your modern technology from this document, and science fiction technology from 1930s-50s science fiction, possibly implemented with 1950's technology. Your power sources are limited to steam, gas, and diesel engines. You choose whether or not to use jet/turbine technology. Stationary power can be hydropower or natural gas. Culture is a blend of 1940s and modern. This document is a good resource.

Atompunk is similar to steampunk, but uses cold war technology instead of industrial revolution technology. Espionage and warfare are natural themes for it. Atompunk isn't a well-developed genre.
It's a good idea to pick most of your science fiction technology from 1950s-80s science fiction. Atompunk has transistors, and you choose whether or not to use integrated circuits. Culture is a blend of 1960s and modern. This document can help.

Rocketpunk is a dark, violent present-day science fiction genre using some Retro-future space technology. Rocketpunk is set mostly in orbit. Conflict in space is a common theme. Rocketpunk isn't a well-developed genre.

Post-apocalypse is a dark genre that takes place after devastating nuclear war or other catastrophic event. While it is often a future envisioned in the past, this document wouldn't be helpful for it. Post-apocalyptic works seldom attempt to predict the future.

Pulp-style science fiction has old-fashoned values and no semiconductors, but is set in the far future and often has ray guns and space ships that can quickly travel between planets (or even stars). This document is surprisingly useful. Both retro-future and pulp-style science fiction draw from the same era for their culture. Pulp science fiction used a similar technology, but added fantastic weapons and spacecraft. The biggest difference lies in subject matter. The visionaries wrote predictions while the pulp writers wrote adventure stories.

"Retro-future" and "Steampunk" are sometimes used interchangably or as generic terms for many of these genres.


Cultural attributes

Retro culture

The visionaries never imagined that in the 1960s a generation would rise up and reject traditional values. Instead the visionaries expected more of society's problems to be solved. Retro-future values are traditional and different from ours. Imagine a 1940s culture with the problems fixed.

Retro-future people are respectful. Wives mostly respect and obey husbands. Children mostly respect and obey parents (disrespectful children are not tolerated).

When people read "The Grapes of Wrath" in 1939, the most horrifying thing was seeing how the great depression shattered and scattered families. The visionaries didn't anticipate that this would become normal. We move every 3-5 years and our relatives are scatted across the country. Traditional families didn't move often or far. Family was more important than we can imagine.

Retro-future and traditional families mostly live close to relatives. Parents are rarely abandoned to nursing homes. Getting a baby-sitter is never a problem with grandparents and relatives around. Their children are raised better because the grandparents are there to teach the parents how to parent.

Most people go to church on Sunday, pray, and read their Bible.

The visionaries foresaw the end of institutionalized racism. This would have happened even without our generation shift in the 1960s, but it might have taken an extra 5 years or so.

Public smoking would have been abolished at the same time for them as for us, and for the same reasons.

Divorce is rare. Single-parent kids are rare. Step-kids are rare. Latchkey kids are rare. Therefore gangs are not prevalent. They have a few gangs every city; we have a few in every school.

Most of our families are broken. Our kids spend the weekends with the fathers (often different fathers), and many don't have fathers at all. Our parents are divorced, if ever married in the first place. This just doesn't happen in the retro-future culture. Less than 10% of their people divorce or have children out of wedlock. They keep such things secret because it is shameful.

Good people don't have sex outside of marriage. Of course, parents must be ever vigilant to instill this virtue into their children before they become teenagers (their culture helps a lot). Children out of wedlock aren't common.

Drug use is prevalent in our society, but not in theirs. Many of the problems that drug use helps us deal with are rare for them. Their society has some messed-up people who curse, use drugs, and commit crimes; but these are the outsiders.

In 1960 the fatherless rate was 3%. Most of the prisoners, suicides, and drug addicts came from that 3% (fatherlessness causes identity issues). Our fatherless rate is 30%; our incarceration, suicide, and addiction rates are unsurprisingly 10 times as high. The retro-future fatherless rate is 1-2%, with 1/20th of the problems. Our effective divorce rate is 80% compared to their 10% (which explains our fatherless rate). Most of our successfull people come from the 20% with both parents married their entire life. Retro-future culture therefor has 5 times the rate of successful people (hard working, law abiding, prosperous, peaceful lives, good marriages, respected, accomplishes what they set out to do, etc).

Some of their morality is enforced. For example, no motel or hotel on the good side of town will knowingly rent a room to an unmarried couple. Ushers in movie theaters keep an eye out for teenage couples behaving inappropriately in the dark. Neighbors keep an eye out for children misbehaving and call the parents.

Justice has a back-channel: the church. Half the time issues can be taken care of with just the involved parties and their church leadership.

Things are built to last. Consumers buy for durability and repairability. In our culture, people stopped buying things built to last in the 1970s and started buying cheap disposable things (this was the peak of our prosperity and there was a flood of cheap imports). The visionaries never foresaw this, so retro-future consumers care about product longevity. We have few possessions over 10 years old, but retro-future characters use many things that age.

Dialogue

Their speech is more refined and respectful than ours.

Most good people don't cuss, curse, or blaspheme. Profane words aren't seen in print, spoken in public, or heard on the airwaves.

Your readers probably don't want to know the exact swear word your villain just used. There are techniques to cover them up or narrate them away.

Architecture

There will be lots of skyscrapers and towers in the big city. There will be a few mega-skyscrapers downtown.

Googie, streamline moderne, and art deco architecture shows up a lot in Retro-future art; investigate them. But most buildings will be plain looking; they are cheaper to build that way (unless you need a flashier look). Look at residential architecture like mid-century modern and Eichler homes. Look at commercial architecture like modernism and futurism.

A skyscraper tries to pack as much floor space as possible into a building by going up. A tower just tries to be as tall as possible. Being skinny makes towers more affordable.

Our skyscrapers go from 6 to 50 floors, with remarkable buildings topping 100 floors. Some of them cover an entire city block. Towers are tall, skinny buildings that may ascend even higher. Note: a building 6 or more stories tall needs elevators & sprinklers; it is called a 'skyscraper'.

A mega-skyscraper goes up a couple hundred floors. Since it covers multiple city blocks, the city street grid continues through tunnels at ground level. Monorails near the 3rd floor level may pass through tunnels. There may be rooftop-landing pads for flying cars and helicopters (valets take them down car elevators). There will be a dirigible mooring mast on top (there is an example atop the Empire State building).

They have more advanced elevator and plumbing technology than we do.

Near-limitless natural resources

The visionaries lived in a world full of natural resources. They came from a history where resources were harvested. And they didn't expect an optimistic future to be any different.

Food costs less.

Wood is cheaper and more common. They use real wood where we use particleboard. They use real wood veneers where we use contact paper printed with wood grain. They use grade 'A' lumber where we use boards full of knots. They build sturdy where we build flimsy. Almost any type of wood is available, but some exotics are expensive.

Leather is less expensive and used much more.

Their oceans are full of fish. Most varieties are readily available. Would you like an orange-roughy sandwich?

Few ecological consequences

The visionaries lived in a world where there were immediate observable (and correctable) consequences for poisoning the land and polluting the water. The visionaries' environmental champions were natural history groups, ecologists, and hunting clubs.

The visionaries didn't anticipate the gradual buildup of toxins, cascading extinctions, climate change, desertification, aquifer collapse, rain forest destruction, ozone thinning, and genetically modified foods we have to face. Their optimistic future doesn't have these problems.

The Retro-future genre is incompatible with stories about famines or ecological catastrophes.

Villains have odious personal traits; heroes & citizens do not (optional)

Odious personal traits are one of the ways your audience identifies villains. This concept goes well with the genre, but isn't necessary for it. The visionaries wrote fiction this way more than we do. Be consistent if you choose to write this way.

Since the genre is a bit more black and white than contemporary fiction, your heroes can be a bit more heroic and your villains can be a bit more villainous. However, don't fall into stereotypes. Be fresh and real without compromising the genre.

Causality (optional, but recommended)

The law of causality goes with the Retro-future genre like peanut butter goes with jelly. In short, every evil or sinful act will always result in undesirable consequences for the perpetrator before the end of the story. So what goes around comes around.

Church is a big part of most people's lives in the Western hemisphere

The visionaries lived in a world where people went to church on Sunday. It is at church they learned about God, made quality relationships, met trustworthy business connections, and so forth. The Retro-future genre in the Western hemisphere is the same. The Eastern hemisphere is not predominantly churchgoing, however. Most Western people in a retro-future world have considerable Bible knowlege and quote it in their every day speech.

Most good people go to church on Sunday (some on Saturday instead). So most businesses are closed that day. Sunday employees are Saturday churchers, those who need the job, and those not committed to churchgoing.

Here is a list of things you can find open on Sunday:

Fashion

The practical look: The visionaries wore timeless fashions up until the rebellious 1960s. Their image of the future depicted people wearing timeless fashions. Those fashions still look good today. Look for fashion inspiration in photographs from 1921 through 1959.

The flashy look: A lot of the visionaries' art showed people wearing silver jumpsuits with shoulder fins and no pockets. We have these things, but they are costumes. They would be careful not to make them sexy or revealing.

Most parents in a Retro-future world would not tolerate the fashions of our rebellious youth from the 1960s on.

No tight fitting or revealing clothes, like the ones our women wear. Our clothes are a product of our moral changes, and won't fit in.

The visionaries made some scantily clad science fiction art. It was meant to sell books, not predict fashion.

Art Deco and Streamlining never went out of style

The visionaries left a lot of artwork showing how they thought the future would look. Art deco and streamlining are common. Use these styles for inspiration in your work.

Other relevant design styles are populuxe, streamline moderne, mid-century modern, Eichler, Googie, futurist, retrotronics, and raygun gothic.

Retro-future itself is now a style. It is popular with art, clothing and architecture. In interior design it is also known as "traditional-modern."

Finances

1990s America was all about credit. But the visionaries came through the Great Depression, where those in debt stood in soup lines for 10 years.

They rarely take loans. They wait, save up, and buy in cash. Unsecured loans are only for those who can't wait.

Retro-future credit cards are convenience cards for the rich and upper middle class. Fools also flash them to give the appearance of wealth, but they pay the price in fees and interest.

Women

While their men live much like ours, their women don't. The tradition-bound visionaries didn't foresee the women's liberation. They expected women to have more freedom and opportunities, but also expected traditional values to work better.

Their women are raised to be respectful and obedient. The man works outside the home and the wife takes care of the kids. This keeps their kids from getting into the trouble ours kids get into.

Good women can expect the old-fashioned safety net to work like it was supposed to. A woman who stays under authority should never worry or be in lack. The visionaries expected this to work most of the time.

Complete women's equality in every way sometimes appears in retro science fiction, but few visionaries predicted this. Most visionaries foresaw roles remaining the same, but with improvements in the woman's lot.

If you write in women's equality, the chain of cause & effects will produce something similar to our society. If you want to be critical, you can describe our society as a single-mother dystopia with an 80% divorce rate and an outrageous crime rate caused by 1/3 of children fatherless. Most of our women will be struggling single mothers at some point. The retro-future role for women doesn't sound so bad when compared to that.

Their women wouldn't want to give up their safety net and child-rearing support any more than ours would want to give up their freedoms. Even so, not even they like being told what to do.

Protections for women

There is a family safety net. It is shameful to allow a relative to be a homeless woman or struggling single mother. Of course, there isn't much anyone can do for a rebellious woman.

They don't fight with their husbands all the time. In our society every family decision is a power struggle: Who gets the remote, who cooks dinner, who washes dishes? Fights (and divorces) aren't common in families with an established power structure. There is peace, except for men who abuse their families.

Their marriages are more stable because divorce is shameful. And if a marriage does fail, their women never have to pay alimony. Because living in sin & sleeping around is sinful, their women don't face single motherhood from that, either.

Their women are rarely homeless or penniless, and rarely face the plight of our single moms. Help comes from all sides for a woman willing to do her part. On the flip side, some of their women won't submit to their husband or the relatives willing to take them in, and they don't get help. Life is hard for them.

Opportunities for women

The retro-future genre has few career choices for women. Most married women only work when the kids are in school. Bosses expect this and provide for it. Their society is set up for women who work in the home, with a part time job if appropriate.

While this can be a lovely source of tension, the genre isn't good for stories about the oppression of women. Their women like their protections and (mostly) accept their limitations. There can be tension when the relatives who are supposed to take care of a woman are the problem, but in a society that protects and supports women and children, it will turn out OK by the end of the story.

The tradition of women taking care of the kids instead of working outside the home was rooted in history. Wherever the unwatched children of the industrial revolution congregated there were gangs, drugs, and crime. And before modern appliances, keeping a house was a full-time job.

Typical careers available to women:

Other limitations:
  • A woman has a hard time getting a loan unless co-signed by her husband, father, or other male relative.

College

Men are steered toward career-oriented degrees and classes. Women can take whatever they want in college.

With so many factory jobs, not everyone goes to college. Many of their men go to trade schools, which are respected. Many women get married instead.

Companies

You can use companies that have gone out of business since 1960. For example, Nash or Convair could make your hero's flying car. Be sure the trademarks are not in use and remember someone still owns the rights to the business name.

Nation-state differences

There can be significant differences between our countries and theirs. Here is a big list of options.


Transportation differences

The visionaries had two incompatible visions of the future. One was Autopia (which we built), and the other we now call retro-future. Pick one. Autopia doesn't need much description, but the retro-future vision is different from what we have.

Autopia

The visionaries imagined a fantastical future with multi-lane interstate freeways of shimmering asphalt stretching from coast to coast where a man can drive his car 70mph as far as he wants. And we built it! This vision yields our transportation system, minus the traffic jams and potholes. If you write in Autopia, you can't have much of the retro-future vision below.

Retro-future transportation

The visions of the future focused a lot on transportation. Travel is cheaper for them. Also, they aren't usually in as much of a hurry as we are. If you write in the retro-future vision, you can have everything below, but you can't have limited access expressways (freeways).

Our world

We travel almost exclusively in cars and airliners. Our cargo travels on container ships, railroads, trucks, and airfreight.

Their world

They use a much wider range of transportation.

Highways

We use limited access expressways like interstates & autobahns. Our highways can be 4 to 8 lanes wide and cut through the landscape at 60mph / 100kph or more. The only way on or off is through interchanges.

They have functioning mass transit and more ways to get around, so they don't need limited access expressways. They use highways: 2 and 4 lane paved roads with curves, side streets, and occasionally intersections. These highways go at 45mph / 70kph, except when they slow down for curves or to go through town.

Their highways have a feature our interstates don't: commerce. The roadsides usually have a shack selling some product of local agriculture or handicraft. They have gas stations, fast food, and motels at intersections and where the highway goes through town. Traveling cross-country on their highways is a slower but richer experience than driving our interstates or autobahns.

Their highways are not full of trucks like ours. There is less traffic because people take mass transit.

Cars

Most of their families that aren't poor have a car, but only one. City people rarely need a car, but often have one for convenience. A rural family needs one, usually some form of truck.

Without embedded computers, cars must be warmed up for a few minutes in cold weather. The engine will die if it is put it in gear too soon. This applies to most other types of vehicles as well.

Flying cars

Flying cars go as fast as an airplane and the good ones take off and land vertically. They fit into a garage because they don't have wings (or the wings retract). They are great for trips of up to 3 hours at 150mph / 250kph. A special license is required.

The advantage to a flying car is freedom and convenience. The owners don't have to drive to the airport, park the car, get on a flight, land, and rent a car. They just go.

There are 3 major types: VTOL, STOL, and RTOL.
VTOL (Vertical TakeOff & Landing, like Moller Skycar) can take off straight up, but most can't drive on roads. Many have small electric parking wheels.
STOL (Short TakeOff & Landing, like Itec) can do short-field takeoffs on dirt strips and drive on dirt roads.
RTOL (Runway TakeOff & Landing, like Terrafugia) needs paved runways for takeoff and paved roads for driving.

Flying cars are ten times the price of ground cars, which makes them more expensive than light planes or commute-copters. Most rich families have a flying car, and most middle class families want one. Some families that aren't quite rich have a flying car anyway (they are willing to sacrifice to make the payments).

A rural family that isn't rich may have a light plane, if they have the money. Biplanes, autogyros, and ultralights are good for short field takeoffs on dirt roads. A middle-income family can afford an ultralight.

A dozen middle-income people can jointly own a flying car, commuter copter, autogyro, or light plane. It can be called a flying club or timeshare.

These vehicles are affordable to rent if only needed occasionally.

Maintaining an operator's license and certification costs both time and money.

Flying car technologies

VTOL technologies
STOL technologies
RTOL technologies

Sky-cycle

A motorcycle is basically two wheels, an engine, and a seat. A sky-cycle (flying motorcycle) is an engine, thrusters, and a seat. It can take off straight up and go 150mph / 250kph. It is less stable than a flying car when hovering and doesn't have a redundant engine, so it is less than 100% safe. It is ten times as expensive than a motorcycle, so not many people have one. The people who own sky-cycles tend to be interesting characters. A special license is required. See the flying car technologies.

Hovercraft

Hovercraft are best over water, sand, mud flats, seashores, and riverbanks. They make great desert cruisers, swamp boats, ferries, river patrols, coast guard vessels, small navy vessels, and so forth. They are fast and can go right up onto shore. Sand traps, shallow water, reefs, rocks, and mud flats are no problem. The best size for a hovercraft is 30-100ft (10-30m), but they can be much larger or smaller.

Some of the visionaries painted scenes with hovercraft on the highway. That just won't work because hovercraft handle like a car on ice.

Aircraft

They use the same planes we do.

They don't use large airliners as much as we do because they have more alternatives. Any frequent flier knows that it's just a bus with wings.

SSTs (Super Sonic Transports) like the Concorde can get there quickly. They prefer QUESST technology: Quiet Super-Sonic Transport. Careful fuselage shaping results in a minimal sonic boom that doesn't bother people. It's an expensive trip because supersonic flight is not fuel-efficient and the skinny fuselage doesn't hold many passengers. If you gotta get there quick and can pay for it, this is how you do it. The cost is three times a 1st class airline ticket, and all seats are 1st class. SSTs are only used on long, high-traffic routes.

The visionaries expected us to use seaplanes a lot more than we do. Any body of water becomes an airfield (unless the water is too rough).

Large aircraft have a pilot, co-pilot, and flight engineer. Without small computers, navigation is manual and fuel must be pumped from tank to tank via the engineering console. The flight engineer also monitors the engines. The co-pilot handles navigation. The pilots of our large aircraft spend most of the flight not touching anything. The flight crew of their large aircraft have plenty of things to check and adjust for the entire flight.

An ultralight is a small one-man airplane with an open cockpit and a small engine. It only goes 40mph / 65kph. Most of them fold up. They can only be used in good weather. They aren't expensive, but owners need a place to put it and take off. A rural family could use a really long driveway as a runway.

Autogyros

An autogyro is a less expensive flying car alternative. It is an airplane with an unpowered (free-spinning) helicopter rotor instead of wings (or possibly in addition to short wings). They need one-third the space to take off and land than an airplane does, but only go one third of the speed. They tend to be small, rarely seating more than four. One-seaters are the most common and most affordable.

Our autogyros have been a little-used novelty since the advent of helicopters, but the visionaries foresaw their continued and expanded use, particularly in urban areas and for agriculture.

Autogyros can have folding blades, so they fit into a garage.

Helicopters

They use the same helicopters we do.

A commute copter is a small one or two person helicopter. The blades fold so it can fit into in a garage. It is slightly less expensive than a flying car.

A rotorcycle weighs as much as a motorcycle and is about the same size. It has no canopy and about an hour of fuel (enough to go 50mi / 75km). The pilot needs a helmet because of the noise and rotor-wash.

Helicopters cost more to maintain than aircraft or autogyros. Owners have to take them apart, check everything, and put them back together regularly because they can't glide safely to earth. Flying cars and sky-cycles share this problem.

Airships: dirigibles and blimps

A blimp is a sausage-shaped balloon with a powered gondola underneath. A dirigible has a rigid aluminum frame. "Airship" is a generic term for either.

A Dirigible goes faster than a blimp because it is more aerodynamic, the motors are on the frame (closer to centerline), and the gondola is inside. A blimp lifts more weight because it is lighter. Dirigibles need to be big (at least 360ft/120m) to be cost effective. Rule of thumb: Dirigibles are for passengers and blimps are for cargo & observation.

Airships replace some of their large aircraft. Airships don't go as fast, but travel more comfortably and smoothly. The experience is more like a train than a bus. There are sleeping berths and a dining area.

The taller buildings in the city are topped with an airship mooring mast.

Airships prefer to use mooring masts to embark and disembark. These mooring masts can be on a building, on a ship, or in an open field. Airships are usually kept in hangars.

Our cruise ships have great food. Their dirigibles have something similar because there is no turbulence in a dirigible. They would take a jet to get there in a hurry or a dirigible to enjoy the trip.

A "semi-rigid" is a blimp with a minimal aluminum frame allowing the engines to be mounted on the envelope. It doesn't go quite as fast as a dirigible, but doesn't need to be as big.

"Zeppelin" is sometimes used as a synonym for "dirigible", even though not all rigid airships are made by the Zeppelin corporation. The term "dirigible" is sometimes used as a generic term for any airship.

Mass transit

This is a network of diesel & electric busses, electric light rail, diesel & electric commuter trains, and electric monorails. The visionaries expected every large city and some medium sized ones to have excellent mass transit systems. Even a small city or rural county would have enough busses for the poor to use.

Trains

Overhead, eleveated, and subway systems greatly increase urban transit capacity because they do occupy automobile lanes and are not affected by automobile traffic. They are more expensve, however. The visionaries expected more to be built, not existing systems being bought & scrapped by automobile companies during the depression.

Light rail

Streetcars are usually electric. Some subway lines use light rail technology and others use monorail. Some light rail lines are elevated.

Heavy rail

Full-sized trains are the main way cargo is transported overland. Commuter trains on heavy rail are sometimes electric. The ride on their passenger trains is smoother than on ours (click-clack instead of CLANK-CLANK). Steam engine are more expensive to operate, but are sometimes used anyway because their reliability can't be beat.

They can speed up lightweight passenger/mail trains on regular tracks by bolting on propellers or jet engines.

Giant rail

These trains are twice as wide, twice as tall, and carry much more weight than regular trains. Giant rail doesn't go everywhere, though. It forms an overland backbone along heavily trafficked routes.

High speed rail

These electric trains only carry passengers and mail, but do so at a couple hundred miles per hour (300kph). A network of high-speed rail lines connects major cities.

The really fast trains are maglevs (levitation via superconducting magnets). They can go 300mph (480kph)

Some high-speed tunnel and tube lines have the air pumped out so the maglevs can go 3000mph (4800kph). Vactrains are expensive and not common. Vactrains will be affordable on the moon when more people live there.

Monorail

These electric trains are similar to light rail. Instead of two small metal rails at ground level they use an elevated concrete track. Overhead monorails are suspended from a metal rail. Monorails tend to be longer, go faster, and make fewer stops than light rail. Some subways are underground monorails.

Gondolas

Overhead suspended cable cars can go over busy streets, canyons, uneven terrain, rivers, and other difficult terrain. They are a cheap way to add more mass transit to a congested city when putting light rail on the streets is a problem. They can connect skyscrapers far above the ground.

Night trains

This is a special case of passenger travel using heavy rail. The train runs only sleeper cars at night for a trip of 400-800 miles. There may be a few stops at the beginning and end, but none in the middle. The passengers sleep through the trip and arrive rested in the morning. It is a little more expensive, but worth it. The dining car serves dinner & breakfast.

Ships

We only use ocean liners as pleasure cruise ships and floating casinos. They use them to get around. They aren't as concerned about getting there quickly, and care more about enjoying the voyage. Their ocean liners and riverboats aren't devoted to hedonistic pleasures like ours today. But their passenger liners have great food to lure passengers who might fly instead.

Some of their ocean liners and river liners have hydrofoils, allowing them to go two or three times as fast. Hydrofoils can't be used when the waves get really big.

They rely heavily on container ships to get cargo across the ocean the same as us. But they also use a lot of riverboats to move containers, while we load them onto less efficient trucks.

Horses

The visionaries didn't foresee that horses would fall into complete disuse. Their horses are still used in rural areas with good pasture. Horses don't take a lot of cash, don't need roads, can pull a wagon, and are versatile. It takes time to take care of a horse, though. Some people really enjoy it.

Cargo tubes

Short distance cargo tubes can be pneumatic or electromagnetic. The shuttle mail and small packages around a city for faster delivery. Not all cities have this system.

Space transportation

Nobody expected that launching things into space would remain difficult, expensive, and dangerous. The retro-future genre presents space travel as it was supposed to be. The best launch sites are in the tropics.

Rockets transport people and large items into space. Their rocket launches are more affordable than ours. The lower stage is usually recoverable.

Space shuttles cost more to build than rockets, but are reusable. They are cheaper to operate than rockets, but not as large.

Space planes fly up to the edge of space, and then launch a small rocket or space shuttle at high speeds. They make five-ton launches much less expensive. 2-3 people can get into orbit using a space plane.

Super guns inexpensively fling small items into orbit. Most guns can loft 1200 lbs (500kg), but some guns can handle twice that. The gun fires a rocket to high altitude, where it accelerates the payload into orbit. Most of these guns lie against the side of tall mountains in the tropics. Research Gerald Bull for more details.

Centrifugal launch catapults are cheaper than super guns, but only fling small rocket from a mountaintop partway to orbit. They can only lift 100 lbs (40kg).

Balloon launched rockets use a hydrogen balloon to lift a rocket into the stratosphere, saving money on small launches. This can handle payloads up to 500 lbs (200kg).

Laser lifts are the cheapest way into space, but can only lift 100 lbs (40kg). A simple steam rocket takes the load up, and lasers provide the heat. At the edge of space a small chemical rocket second stage accelerates the load into orbit. The lower stage falls back down and a recovery fee is paid to whoever returns it. Laser lifts rely on high altitude launch sites.

Other transportation

Their jet packs cost as much as a motorcycle, but only have 10 minutes of fuel (enough to go 10 mi / 15 km). They are heavy and aren't used too much.

A skybucket looks like a trash can on top of an engine. It is stable and steers by leaning. They are expensive and can hover around for about half an hour, but don't go very fast. A flying platform (flyplat) is similar; but it looks like the pilot is standing on a giant fan.

Russia uses lots of Ekranoplans.

Monowheels have been around since the 1920s and look cool, but nobody ever expected then to be a practical form of transportation.

Hovertrains are hovercraft-trains. They were tried out in the 70's & 80's. We found maglevs faster and more affordable.

Travel agents

The retro future genre has travel agents. We book our own tickets, lodging, and car rentals over the Internet. They call their travel agent, who does all this for them. They can also procure most travel-related services, including entertainment, reservations, guides, and so forth. A good travel agent can get lower prices, better services, and leverage when things go wrong. They are also very convenient. Travel agent services are usually extensive and free to the customer. The travel agent gets paid small kickbacks and prices are slightly higher for everyone to compensate. Most travel agents are women, and many of those do most of their work while the kids are in school.

Cities

The visionaries imagined cities would go up more than ours, covering less area and having more skyscrapers. The later visionaries predicted gleaming suburbs, but didn't imagine them stretching to the horizon like ours.

The visionaries also didn't imagine sedentary Americans getting in their cars to reach things less than a block away, or our empty sidewalks. They live a world where city people walk, bicycle, or take mass transit. Everything is close by and people don't mind exercise. Cities are full of bustle, mothers going about their business in the morning, children dominating the afternoon, and families in the evening.
 

Technology attributes

Fusion reactors

The visionaries expected to have fusion reactors by now. Fusion reactors produce huge amounts of clean cheap power. But the reactors are really big, expensive, and hard to build.

Moon bases mine helium-3, which fusion reactors need for starting after a shutdown. Research helium-3 for more details.

Electronics

They don't have semiconductors; Everything is done with vacuum tubes and relays. Their electronics are much larger, more expensive, and need much more power than ours. So they have less of them.

Instead of a display and a bunch of buttons, their electronics just have a knob or two.

Music is stored on vinyl records, cassette tapes, and 8-track tapes. Record companies and music stores are big business.

Jukeboxes are found in bars and in places where teenagers congregate.

Movies are stored on 8mm, 16mm, or 32mm film. Small handheld movie cameras use 8mm and cinemas use 32mm.

Home movies are played on VCR tapes. Their VCRs are much larger than ours. Their cable TV and satellite boxes are much larger than ours also. All of these things are expensive and about the size of one of our printers, or about the size of our first-generation technology.

Digital data is stored on magnetic reel-to-reel tape and (big) hard drives. Tapes store a lot of data (1 to 10GB per tape), but are really slow. Hard drives are really fast but don't store much (10MB to 1GB). The drives are about the size of one of our printers.

CDs and DVDs are large and expensive. They are used for computer storage, music studio masters, and some professional filmmaking. storage capacity is 500MB per CD and 4GB per DVD.

There is no LED, LCD, flat screen, or touch screen technology. TVs and computer monitors use cathode ray tubes. A Vacuum Florescent Display (VCD) looks a lot like an LED display, but takes a lot more power and the circuitry to operate it is bigger. There are also nixie tubes.

There are no digital watches. The best watches have jewel bearings and come from Switzerland.

There are no flash memory or EEPROM devices.

Loran receivers are the size of a shoebox, need external power, and only display coordinates. They do the job of GPS with ground-based towers. Our GPS systems need microcontrollers to work.

Some expensive cars and boats have a satellite navigation system. A little light shows the location on a small map. Changing maps requires recalibration.

Computers

Electronic computers are expensive, fill a room, and are slow by our standards. They have a keyboard, mouse, and CRT monitor. They are 1000x larger than ours, 100x more expensive, and are much less capable. They generate lots of heat, so there is a big air conditioner somewhere. Note that 1000x larger means 10x taller, 10x wider, and 10x thicker.

Their software is over 25 years behind ours because there are fewer computers and less demand. If you want to understand what their computers can do, imagine a 1990 computer.

A multi-user computer has a dozen or more terminals. They do this because VDTs (terminals) are much cheaper than computers. Too many users slows the computer down. Their computers usually run slow because of all the users. Most VDT's don't have a mouse because of the time lag if too many users slows the computer down.

Their printer, storage, and other peripheral technology is 25 years behind ours because there is less demand. Some of their electric typewriters have printer ports so a computer can use it as a printer.

Any company large enough to have an entire building will have a computer room in it. It has programs for billing, finance, inventory, engineering, and so forth. A company with multiple buildings or multiple floors will have more computers.

The phone company has a lot of computers to run automated switchboards.

Mechanical computers are devices that do one thing. Examples include adding machines, cash registers, load balance computers for aircraft, etc. They can be as simple as a slide-rule or a cardboard circular rule that converts patient weight to dosage.

There are no pocket calculators. That's what slide-rules do.

Our "embedded systems" are devices that have a solid-state microcontroller hidden inside. Our embedded systems are everywhere and allow us complex controls and displays. They don't have any embedded systems at all.

There are no computer viruses or malware.

Communication

Their landline telephone system is similar to ours, but the electronics are larger and more expensive. Phone calls are more expensive without solid-state technology. So people send more letters.

Their telephones are touch-tone just like ours and look much like our landline phones. But they don't have anything like our fancy feature-laden high-end telephones. Their telephones are heavy.

Their videophones are the size of a shoebox. The screen is about 3x4" (75x100mm). Conference videophones are the size of a TV, with a screen to match, but they need a special phone line (it's an expensive call). Because videophones are more expensive and the screen is small, not everyone has these. If someone has one, many of their friends probably do, too. Videophones have been around a long time, and the visionaries expected them to catch on more than they did.

Teletypes are electric typewriters that can send and receive over phone lines or radio (but rarely both).

They have cassette-tape based answering machines that are much larger than our digital answering machines, about the size of a hardbound book. Their answering machines are capable, but don't have the features of our modern computer-based ones. Their features are tape-recorder based: record, play, fast-forward, and rewind. That's all an answering machine really needs. The big expensive ones can be operated remotely over the telephone: Press a login telephone button combination while it is playing it's message. Then it's 1 to play messages, hold down 2 to rewind, hold down 3 to fast forward, and so forth.

Their voicemail and voice messaging systems are much simpler and less flexible than ours. More expensive and less common as well. The system is the size of a bookshelf.

Cell phones are called mobile phones, and they are the size of a quart of milk. Only turn them on to call out, because the batteries only last half an hour. They aren't common, and calls are expensive. If built into a car it is called a car phone and can receive calls whenever the engine is running. They are also uncommon. A briefcase phone has a small Teletype; It's expensive and very cool. Mobile phones have a channel knob like our old TVs; They click through channels searching for a dial tone. Channel 1 is for emergencies. Their mobile phone systems are less capable than our cell phones, but that is OK because there is much less traffic. The service is expensive.

They have wallet-sized pagers that beep or vibrate when they should call their message service. They need frequent charging. Men clip them to their belts and women put them in their purses. The service is expensive.

Two people calling each other on mobile phones works like this: Dick calls Jane's message service, punches in her message number on his phone keypad, and leaves a message. A few minutes later, Jane's pager beeps. She turns her phone on and calls her message service, punches in her retrieval number, and listens to the message. If Dick asked Jane to call him back, he will leave his mobile phone on for 5 minutes or so.

Premium mobile telephone service plans have automatic forwarding that works like this: Dick calls Jane's mobile phone number. If Jane's mobile phone is on and connected, the computer puts Dick's call through. If not, Dick's call is forwarded to Jane's message number. This will either be a pager number or a landline (which probably has an answering machine).

FAX machines are more expensive and much larger than ours. They are common, though.

There is no Internet. Newspapers & magazines are big business. Newspapers and magazines are really thick. Their libraries are larger and busier than ours, and have more useful books. They have more mail-order catalogs than you can imagine. Encyclopedias are a great source of information; Even a family of modest means has a small or outdated set on their bookshelf.

Computers have email, but there aren't a lot of computers and people don't send email for trivial purposes. There is no spam or email crime.

Speech recognition and synthesis are novelties requiring a full-sized computer. Small tape players and disc players can do much of what we use speech synthesis for.

There isn't much digital communication.

Bonus lesson: You know how a transistor AM radio sounds tinny and staticy? Angela's father-in-law has a big tube radio built in 1939, and it doesn't sound like that at all. It sounds like the radio announcer is in the room with you. Also, musicians will tell you that tube amps sound much better. Keep in mind that retro-future audio equipment sounds much better than ours.

Social media

The visionaries predicted social media, but not who would use it, how, or our technology. Here is how social media might work using their technology.

Their social media works via FAX servers.

To update a page, call the provider's local number via FAX. Their FAXes are fairly common. The first sheet has barcodes for the account number and secret number (effectively a password). The following pages are the new content, which replaces the old. The pages can be written, typed, sketched upon, and/or have black & white photographs taped to them.

To view someone's page, FAX in a request page. It has the barcodes for the requester's account number, FAX number, and the account numbers for all the pages to view. The server will start sending the requested pages, sometimes within minutes.

Computers run the system, and pages are stored on magnetic tape. The system runs slowly when traffic is high, like when high school lets out. The magic of FAXes makes this work, because they keep retrying until they get through. Bad FAXes make for bad photos.

Free providers FAX advertisements with page views. Most people use free providers. Advertisers pay to have ads delivered to the target demographic. Free providers brag to the consumers that their ads consume less paper than their competitors, and brag to the advertisers how they can sneak the ads into the middle of the content.

Repercussions: Copy shops and photo shops can print barcodes. Photo shops offer thin prints. Good FAXes take thick stock and paper with photographs and barcodes taped to it. FAXes that can reproduce shades of grey are in demand, even though they cost more. Many families with teenagers have a FAX. Their FAXes are bigger and more expensive than ours.

Photography

There are no digital cameras, only mechanical film cameras. There is no auto-zoom or auto-focus.

Most cameras are cheap point & shoot cameras with flash cubes. They even have single-use cardboard disposable ones. Good cameras are 35mm with flash attachments and interchangeable lenses.

Drop off your film (or disposable camera) for 3-5 day developing in a big-box store, a drug store, or a drive-through photo booth (look up the Fotomat corporation). Go to a photo studio for faster developing, high quality developing, or important negatives. The negatives are returned with the prints. Small prints come in an envelope with a second pocket for negatives. Large prints come in a big envelope, and a small envelope with the negatives is enclosed.

Developing options include multiple copies, prints of various sizes, or slides. Reprints or enlargements are cheap and easy if you have the negatives and don't put your fingers on them.

Polaroid cameras give near-instant prints that can't easily be enlarged. Polaroid is a trademark and should be capitalized.

Photographs are kept in albums for viewing. Slides are kept in spare projector carousels or trays for viewing. Families always have a box or two full of pictures that don't get looked at or thrown away.

A slide projector projects the picture onto a wall. You press the button to advance to the next slide in the tray or carousel. A slide viewer is small and cheap; you hold it up to the light to view a single slide.

Dad sometimes tortures guests by getting out the slide projector. Everyone is asleep by the time he turns the lights back on! It is night, everyone is tired, the room is dark, the slides are boring, and the fan makes a rhythmic hum.

The military

Their military is similar to ours. Ours is more capable because of our semiconductor technology, but theirs has some unique equipment.

Flying jeeps replace some helicopters and light vehicles.

They have giant tanks called "dreadnought tanks". These tanks are difficult to transport, but are impervious to small antitank weapons. Dreadnought tanks are too heavy for bridges and cross rivers by driving across the bottom with a snorkel.

There is no war allowed in space (or the moon) as per the Canaveral Convention. There is nowhere to hide in space; a rocket can fly up, launch missiles, and get anything. One war in space would fill all the useful orbits with debris, ruining it for everyone forever.

Walkie-talkies look like cordless phone handsets, and the batteries don't last long. They have a one-mile range.

Two-way radios are in a small backpack. Some have a telephone handset. The battery doesn't last long, but can be recharged by vigorously turning the hand-crank. Batteries can be swapped quickly.

There are no phased array (flat) radars. Their dish radars are the same as ours.

They have a strategic weapon we don't have: the super gun. This is a smaller version of the gun that launches stuff into orbit. It is a big pipe laid against the side of a mountain, aimed in the general direction of the target. It flings 10 ton bombs 1000 miles (1600 km). It hits wherever the recon plane shines the targeting laser. If a plane can't get through, the super gun shoots a lot to blow up everything in the target area. Magnetic guns are much more expensive, need a lot of electricity, have a huge bank of capacitors, but can reload in 5 minutes. Powder guns are much cheaper and more portable, but need 2 hours to reload (they need to change the barrel liner). Most super guns are powder guns.

The visionaries expected navies use more hovercraft and hydrofoils.

Our robots and UAVs are semi-autonomous because of all the computer chips in them. Theirs are 100% remote control; they have far fewer. Their miniature video cameras weigh 5 pounds; they have no small inexpensive robots or UAVs.

They use encrypted Teletype technology we don't need. It is a Teletype with encoding rotors and a cassette tape recorder. Encoding can be turned on and off. It can send & receive over phone, radio, or via cassette tape. It looks like a typewriter with a cassette tape recorder built in.

Their military uses airships. Their large military airships have a small helicopter landing pad for the same reason our navy ships do. They have carrier airships: Rigid dirigibles with a landing deck on top for helicopters and flying jeeps. This allows helicopters to operate independently from bases.

Their Tazers are a little bigger than ours, but they have Tazers, too. Note that the word Tazer is a trademark and should be capitalized.

Business

Electric typewriters are larger and more expensive than manual ones, but type faster and easier. They can also make more carbons. Carbon copies aren't used much because of photocopiers.

Mechanical adding machines and electric calculators are the size of shoeboxes. Electric ones are faster, but more expensive.

Photocopiers do not need solid-state technology. They have as many as we do. Their photocopiers look like ours, but don't have many features. There are two or three paper sizes, a darkness knob, etc. Their collator attachments are just as expensive as ours.

FAX machines and Teletypes are big, expensive, and everywhere.

Contact information is kept in a rolodex.

Secretaries type reports, letters, and other business correspondence. They take dictation in shorthand or use cassette-tape dictaphones. Many secretaries are only available when the kids are in school.

They manufacture on manual production lines. Our robotic manufacturing equipment wouldn't be cost-effective without solid-state computer chips. So they have a lot more factory jobs than we do.

Electric cash registers are faster than mechanical ones, but cost more and need power to work.

Credit cards work by making imprints on carbon paper slips, which the merchant takes to the bank. Most people don't use credit cards. Credit cards have raised numbers. The imprint machine is just a handheld sheet of metal with an imprint roller on a track. Put the card in the imprint machine, put the 3-layer paper slip on top, and slide the handle over to make an imprint. The customer has to sign the slip, and gets one of the carbon copies. The card's owner pays a monthly fee, and a high interest rate on any balance not paid by the end of the month.

There are no ATMs or debit cards.

Banks have drive-up windows & walk-up windows. Big banks in big cities have 24-hour drive-ups & walk-ups, where the after-hours teller does simple transactions through a security window. No customers are allowed in the building after hours.

The best places to advertise are newspaper, magazine, radio, and TV. Companies who advertise to the young do so via social media FAX servers.

Being in the telephone book means existence. Every city has one phone company and one phone book. If you aren't in the book you won't get called. The telephone book is color coded. Red is for emergency numbers and help lines (its a few pages in the front). Blue is for government (it comes after red). Yellow pages are for businesses (it takes up more than half the phone book). Gray pages are a small, limited reverse directory. White pages are for private residences (its the last section).

Companies are listed in the Thomas Register. It is a big multi-volume nation-wide listing of distributors, manufacturers, and service companies. It is sorted by categories so you can find the supplier you need. You find it in libraries and some companies, where it takes up a whole shelf.

There are a lot of trade magazines. They are mostly ads with a few columns & articles. Their purpose is to let you find businesses in that trade. They are usually free to people in the industry.

They have no complex automated self-serve machines, like our self-serve gas pumps or self-checkout grocers. An attendant pumps the gas and collects money. A grocer rings up groceries by hand. They have devices like coin-operated parking meters, vending machines, and laundries, but these are limited to small denominations. Dispensing high-value product from coin-op machines would invite criminals to make slugs.

The household

Televisions use cathode ray tubes. There are no flat screens. They don't have digital television or wall-sized picture tubes. Cable and satellite boxes are more expensive and much larger. They only have cable in upscale neighborhoods, and it has far fewer channels than ours.

We have wide-screen HD digital TV, they have traditional format analog TV with less resolution.

Televisions use vacuum tubes, which need to warm up for a few minutes to work right. Some radios and TVs have "instant on", which means they never turn completely off unless unplugged. They affect the power bill and go through tubes much faster.

The better TVs have remotes, which work by radio or ultrasound. Most people prefer ultrasound. The four buttons are volume up & down, and channel up & down. There is also an on/off button if the TV has "instant on" (most TVs with remotes do).

Microwave ovens don't need solid-state technology. They have as many as we do, but without the fancy features. A power knob and a timer knob are all anyone really needs.

Washers, driers, dishwashers, toaster ovens, and other appliances are controlled mostly by a mechanical timer knob that goes "tick-tick-tick".

Consumer goods

Portable radios are the size of a wallet and the batteries don't last long. Portable cassette players are only a little bigger. Young people always seem to have headphones on, and the parents make them take the headphones off in public because it's rude.

Weather forecasting

They have better sattelite coverage than we do, but most of our forecasting advances come from computer modeling. So their weather forecasting is only half as accurate as ours. A one-day forecast is more likely right than wrong. A three-day forecast isn't very accurate, but gives you some idea about what might go on. A ten-day forecast just tells you about the weather that might be coming your way in a week or two.

Undersea cities

An undersea city doesn't have to deal with waves or weather, as long as it has power. Power comes from reactors, wave buoys, generators, and electric cables.

These are small cities that do oil drilling, undersea mining, geothermal power, and other types of resource extraction. Building one at 150 ft (50m) or less is affordable. Operating an undersea city below 350 ft (100m) is expensive. It is cheaper for us to build a platform on stilts and it is cheaper for them to build on the bottom (retro-future construction technology is a little more advanced than ours).

Shallow undersea cities have an elevator mast to the surface, which may be retractable. Near shore cities use a tunnel. Some undersea cities rely on ferry subs to ship or shore. How shallow can it be? However big the waves get, that's the minimum distance between the building tops and the surface.

Oxygen is extracted from seawater via membranes and a little electricity. This apparatus is too large for use on submarines.

They have better anti-foul coatings than we do. The visionaries' art shows gleaming metal surfaces that aren't encrusted by sea life, and lots of windows that don't have to be washed by divers every day.

Our first underwater habitat was constructed with great optimism in 1962. Research and development of undersea habitats was expected to increase continually, and costs were expected to drop.

The moon

The moon is ripe for mining. There are valuable metals to be prospected and mined, helium-3 is in moon dust, and ice is in craters at the poles.

Lava tubes make great places to build habitats. Farms in inflatable domes help support everything.

Helium-3 is vital for fusion reactors and several other important purposes. It is very rare on earth, but common in moon dust.

Water and rocket fuel are expensive to take to the moon, so ice is mined from the lunar poles, where it is abundant. Lunar factories make air, water, and rocket fuel out of ice and solar power. Electric catapults (coilguns) fling fuel canisters and ice blocks from the moon to earth orbit for refueling outbound rockets.

Sulfur is abundant on the moon, and can be used to make a cheap low-power rocket fuel without water or oxygen. Sulfur fuel rockets are good enough for orbital and lunar operations. You can never keep the smell completely out of the interior, though.

Ilmenite can be mined for oxygen in many places. It is more expensive to process than ice, but ice can only be mined at the poles.

Metals, glasses, and other materials are mined on the moon and flung into orbit via electric catapults.

Our Apollo-era plans would have established the first moonbase in the mid-1980s.

Space stations

There are all kinds of wonderful materials, crystals, and alloys possible in zero gravity that can't be made on earth.

The cheapest way to get materials for a large station into orbit is to fling them into orbit from the moon.

Once there are enough people in orbit, the cheapest way to feed them is with agricultural stations in orbit and on the moon.

Our first manned space station was orbited in 1971. Apollo-era plans would have established permanent space stations in the mid-1970s.

Other technology

They have the same lasers we do, except they have no solid-state lasers. This means no laser pointers, small cheap DVD players, and so forth. Their lasers are big and power-hungry.

They don't have semiconductor-based solar power, but their solar power is still efficient, and looks a lot like ours. It's just a little heavier.

Period science fiction technology

The visionaries' science fiction can sometimes be difficult to distinguish from their visions of the future. Here is a short list of technology that they didn't really expect to have by now. It is classic science fiction and not Retro-future.


Links

Dark Roasted Blend (http://www.darkroastedblend.com/): The site has a "Retro Future" category full of the visionaries' original artwork



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