tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14182509040279176562024-03-14T13:07:14.246-06:00Voyages ExtraordinairesScientific Romances in a Bygone AgeCory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.comBlogger217125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1418250904027917656.post-62050958325250045442023-11-08T00:00:00.450-07:002023-11-14T08:50:50.133-07:00Kenji Miyazawa's Night on the Galactic Railroad In Japan, riding a steam train through outer space is a melancholy symbol of the human journey. Like the gentle drift of the sakura petal, the whistle of a train means a transition in life. That human quality... those melancholy, bittersweet coming of age lessons... were inherited from renowned writer Kenji Miyazawa's Night on the Galactic Railroad, whose own life was a tragic and all-too Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1418250904027917656.post-46669260197097740532023-10-25T00:00:00.000-06:002023-10-25T00:00:00.134-06:00Japan's Vengeful Spirits, Part II: Yotsuya KaidanShe has become one of the most recognizable archetypes of modern horror: the creepy, pale girl with long, stringy black hair who is pursuing her relentless quest for revenge. Her main introduction to the West has been through Hollywood remakes of Japanese horror films, like The Ring and The Grudge. Her pedigree goes back much further, to the Kabuki stage of the Edo Period. Now known by other Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1418250904027917656.post-32605949355914498662023-10-11T00:00:00.003-06:002023-10-11T00:00:00.133-06:00Japan's Vengeful Spirits, Part I: Botan Doro and Bancho SarayashikiAmongst the popular and enduring ghost stories in Japanese culture are those of Onryo, The vengeful spirit. Predominately these spirits are women scorned in love, and they have echoed through history, being revived in such films as The Ring and The Grudge. Through them the West has inherited the particular image of the creepy woman in white with stringy black hair hanging over Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1418250904027917656.post-82733205579049481552023-08-30T00:00:00.001-06:002023-08-30T00:00:00.141-06:00Toei's Puss 'n BootsBefore Antonio Banderas put his accent on the character, perhaps the most internationally renowned version of Puss 'n Boots was the animated character from Toei studios. So popular was little Pero and the three films to feature him that he became the corporate logo for the company.
Trailer for The Wonderful World of Puss 'n Boots.
Pero is named for Charles Perrault, who provided the Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1418250904027917656.post-1029553147952817852023-08-16T00:00:00.001-06:002023-08-16T00:00:00.130-06:00Cyrano de Bergerac: Grandfather of Voyages Extraordinaires
Though regarded as the father of Scientific Romances, and therefore the grandfather of Science Fiction, Jules Verne was not without his antecedents. Going far back, very far, into the earliest of literature that could be considered a forerunner of the genre, Verne looks to a fellow countryman. He is none other than the man most famous for his nose, Cyrano de Bergerac.
Published posthumously Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1418250904027917656.post-24492013212309175842023-08-02T00:00:00.000-06:002023-08-02T00:00:00.137-06:00One Hundred Years HenceThe following samples of merchandise premium cards is an English-language version of the same art used for the set by Hildebrands Chocolate that we previously posted about. Makers of these cards - in this case likely Kuntsdruck-Friedberg of Berlin - would happily replicate art and designs for companies in different markets. Why mess up a good thing? At the turn of the century, it was highly Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1418250904027917656.post-8839344480792378322023-07-19T20:29:00.000-06:002023-07-19T20:29:00.130-06:00Un Matrimonio Interplanetario, A Marriage in the MoonNot even cosmic space can stand between two lovers! Enrico Novelli produced this rather ambitious romance in 1910. Rich in Mélièsian imagery, Novelli makes ample use of fairy tale style while turning Verne's From the Earth to the Moon into a love story. Novelli, also known by the nom de plume Yambo, was already an accomplished writer of children's stories. Among them were Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1418250904027917656.post-10391602657548184892023-07-05T00:00:00.026-06:002023-07-05T00:00:00.136-06:00Six Weeks in the Moon; or, A Trip Beyond the ZenithHappy Days was a magazine that ran from 1894 to 1924 and published stories very much in the classic "dime novel" vein. The overwhelming number of its stories are of the "boy" type... The pages of Happy Days were replete with boy detectives, boy sheriffs, boy lawyers, boy financiers, boy industrialists, boy rangers, boy miners, boy adventurers, boys going to every corner of the world, Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1418250904027917656.post-85858645440002276702023-06-21T00:00:00.000-06:002023-06-21T00:00:00.130-06:00The Electric Hotel by Segundo de Chomón
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. So goes the adage that Westerners like to tell themselves, spoken by Science Fiction authors channelling the spirits of racial "scientists" of a century past who saw others only as ignorant savages. While those "savages" were well aware that the man holding the box that made images of them was simply the owner of a technology,Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1418250904027917656.post-30221397931136744562023-06-07T00:00:00.000-06:002023-06-07T00:00:00.130-06:00Moscow in the XXIII Century
William Gibson once described Science Fiction not as true speculation about the future, but rather, the colonization of the future with the present. A dramatic example of this truism can be found in the postcard series Moscow in the XXIII Century, produced in 1914.
Published by Einem, one of the biggest and most popular confectionary brands in Russia, these cards purported to showCory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1418250904027917656.post-84135895833364877642023-05-24T00:00:00.000-06:002023-05-24T00:00:00.125-06:00The Conversion of the Professor by George Chetwyn Griffith
Now against the specialist, against the man who studies only art or electricity, or the violin, or the thumbscrew or what not, there is only one really important argument, and that, for some reason or other, is never offered. People say that specialists are inhuman; but that is unjust. People say an expert is not a man; but that is unkind and untrue. The real difficulty about the specialist or Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1418250904027917656.post-88347167289663245862023-05-10T00:00:00.007-06:002023-05-10T00:00:00.128-06:00Arthur Thiele's FlugmaschinenCarl Robert Arthur Thiele was a well-known illustrator of postcards within Germany, though his output outside the country is not as well known. Beyond Deutschland he was mostly known as a painter of anthropomorphic animals, and they were his most profitable subject. Nevertheless he produced many, many images of many different kinds. Born in Leipzig in 1860 and dying in the same city in 1936, he Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1418250904027917656.post-22679376913994149842023-04-26T17:21:00.002-06:002023-04-27T07:02:49.626-06:00Space Travel in 1918
The following excerpt from a 1918 children's encyclopedia shows the immense distances of celestial objects by how long it would take for them to be reached by a flying machine travelling at a whopping two miles a minute. Click for a larger image.
Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1418250904027917656.post-47459330661497169332023-04-12T00:00:00.002-06:002023-04-13T07:38:08.702-06:00The Scientific Romances of Garrett P. Serviss
From the last quarter of the 19th century through the first quarter of the 20th, Garrett P. Serviss was one of the best-known popularizers of astronomy in the United States. Though trained in law, Serviss became a journalist in 1876 for the New York Sun and revealed an aptitude for reporting on scientific matters in clear terms that could be understood by the lay reader. This led to Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1418250904027917656.post-10103712996825657802023-03-29T00:00:00.053-06:002023-03-29T00:00:00.150-06:00For Fame, Money, or Love? by Rodrigues Ottolengui
There are certain mysteries that man is not meant to know, foremost of which are the inner workings of a woman's mind. And what if, having learned its terrible secrets, a man could invent some device by which to express his anguish in its purest form before taking his own life in the sorrowful revelation? That is the subject of the short story For Fame, Money, or Love? by dentist and authorCory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1418250904027917656.post-80298658010547986232023-03-15T00:00:00.065-06:002023-03-15T00:00:00.153-06:00En L'An 2000 - Daily Life Made BetterEn L'An 2000 (English: In the Year 2000) were a series of cigarette cards produced in France at the turn of 1900. The initial series was released between 1899 and 1901, in conjunction with the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle, when excitement about the advancements of the coming century were accelerating. A second series was produced in 1910.In this third collection, we look at Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1418250904027917656.post-10992644697327020612023-03-01T00:00:00.039-07:002023-03-01T00:00:00.151-07:00En L'An 2000 - The Life AquaticEn L'An 2000 (English: In the Year 2000) were a series of cigarette cards produced in France at the turn of 1900. The initial series was released between 1899 and 1901, in conjunction with the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle, when excitement about the advancements of the coming century were accelerating. A second series was produced in 1910.This second set of cards from the Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1418250904027917656.post-69421477913955614232023-02-15T00:00:00.050-07:002023-02-15T00:00:00.155-07:00En L'An 2000 - Life in the AirEn L'An 2000 (English: In the Year 2000) were a series of cigarette cards produced in France at the turn of 1900. The initial series was released between 1899 and 1901, in conjunction with the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle, when excitement about the advancements of the coming century were accelerating. A second series was produced in 1910.For the most part, the series is a Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1418250904027917656.post-9031576093617412192023-02-01T00:00:00.000-07:002023-02-01T00:00:00.159-07:00Professor Ezekiel Harkinson's Plan “Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.”- George OrwellAlas for the best-laid plans of our brightest intellectuals that they should always suffer defeat at the hands of the ignorant. How far humanity might progress if we were not held back by pithy emotional considerations like people marrying who they want to marry!Enter Professor Ezekiel Harkinson, who has lit upon Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1418250904027917656.post-20780734413944640172023-01-18T00:00:00.017-07:002023-01-18T11:57:47.059-07:00The Greatest Shootout in Wild West HistoryThe history of the American West is filled with iconic clashes between the law and those who flouted it. The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, the Long Branch Saloon in Dodge City, the gunning down of the Dalton Gang in the Coffeyville Bank Robbery, the "Four Dead in Five Seconds," Elfego Baca's Frisco Shootout, Wild Bill's Dead Man's Hand... But none of those were as colourful as the shootout betweenCory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1418250904027917656.post-61068993702534456342023-01-04T07:15:00.164-07:002023-01-04T07:15:00.158-07:00The Perils of Pauline and the First Female Action StarsIn December 2022, movie star Jennifer Lawrence came under fire on social media after a Variety interview in which she recollected her pride at being the first ever female action star. “I remember when I was doing Hunger Games," Lawrence said, "nobody had ever put a woman in the lead of an action movie because it wouldn’t work — were told — girls and boys can both identify with a male lead, but Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1418250904027917656.post-84291997155439674592022-12-21T00:00:00.000-07:002022-12-21T00:00:00.158-07:00The Defenders of Santa ClausThe following charmed illustration appeared in the December 8, 1898 edition of Life Magazine and speaks for itself. Merry Christmas and a Happy Holidays to you all!Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1418250904027917656.post-51895103072653539002022-12-07T00:00:00.040-07:002022-12-07T00:00:00.315-07:00Life Magazine, Dec. 10, 1914: The Retrofuturism IssueSomething must have been in the water at the offices of Charles Dana Gibson's original Life Magazine in December of 1914, because their Dec. 10th issue is crammed full of predictive vignettes of life in 1950. These written and illustrative prognostications are much as one would expect from a humour magazine of the period, with various burlesques on politics, the war, gender issues, and so Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1418250904027917656.post-8750292501713727482022-11-23T00:00:00.005-07:002022-11-23T00:00:00.151-07:00Even More of Richard Vincent Cutler's "The Gay Nineties" Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1418250904027917656.post-91566943036934077292022-11-09T00:00:00.000-07:002022-11-09T00:00:00.162-07:00Voiturette "La Mouche"This charming advertisement from 1900 is for "La Mouche," the first model of automobile produced by Teste et Moret, a French manufacturer. "La Mouche" had a single-cylinder built-in engine and was available in two- and four-seater models. Some 300 of the cars were built, with only seven known to exist.Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0