Out of Time: Designs for the Twentieth-Century Future

Customer Reviews:

Welcome to the FUTURE!.......2003-12-20

This ia a great book, for science fiction fans or just people interested in future forecasting of the 20th century. The book deals with the ideas, serious or not, of what past artists, scientists and writers thought the future would look like. Cities, cars, airships, rockets, monorails fill the pages of this book, with text which guides you on your tour of the 'future'. Some designs like the floating airports, the car/boat and the monorail HAVE changed reality (for some of us),while other ideas, like the six mile high tower, are not yet available.
My problem, my ONLY problem, with the book is how small it is. At 96 pages it barely covers anything. The chapter on robots is only TWO pages long and only has TWO illustrations. I noticed only ONE underwater city and some drawings, like a few pages on the 'Future City' have no text at all.
Still, it is a great gift for sci-fi fans, future engineers or fans of the cartoon series "Futurama".

Where's the rest of the book?!.......2002-01-13

This was my first reaction upon opening the parcel containing this book. Truly, it is a wonderful book; chock full of colourful illustrations and lively text. As such, it is a keeper.
Alas, it simply isn't enough! At 96 pages it is barely longer than a two part magazine article.
Where, for example, are the futuristic designs for the 1939 World's Fair? Or the 1962 World's Fair? Or the 1964 World's Fair?
Where are the designs for seminal 50's sci-fi movies like 'Forbidden Planet'?
Where are the concept drawings for Disneyland's Tomorrowland and Epcot Center?
Where are the space age clothing designs of Rudi Gernreich? Where are'The Jetsons'for crying out loud?
Wherever they are, they are not to be found in the pages of this book. Never has a book created within me such a mixture of delight and colossal disappointment.

Out of Time: Designs for the Twentieth-Century Future.......2000-11-11

aharlib@worldnet.att.net 'Out of Time: Designs for the Twentieth Century Future' by Norman Brosterman is a glossy 8 X 10" trade paperback which gathers together numerous, rather fascinating and fun images of what has now become standard, even cliched concepts of the future: flying, domed cities; bubble-topped cars; humanoid robots; monorails; rocket ships, etc.---the output of talented American dsigners, artists and illustrators who, in the period covering the 1890s to the mid-1960s, focused their imaginations on rendering 'things to come'. 'Out of Time', utterly enjoyable as a book in its own right, also serves as the catalog of a Smithsonian Institute sponsored 3 year traveling exhibition also curated by author Norman Brosterman, a NY-based writer, architect, artist, and

collector of modern cultural artifacts whose own possessions comprised a considerable proportion of the contents celebrated herein. Interest in this volume is vastly increased due to the fact that few of the orignal water colors, oil paintings aand pen-and-ink drawings which took Brosterman years to track down have ever been displayed for the public before.

Essentially, 'Out of Time' is a wonderful nostalgia trip for those who grew up relishing the old pulp magazines, popular technology periodicals and promotions for the 1939 NY World's Fair. It will be a revelation for later generations who are curious about the work of the "inveterate technodreamers" who imagined an alternative 20th century with visions that had an impact and influence on the real world---in industrial and automotive design, fashion, warfare, the exploration of space, and the arts---that was widespread albeit hardly recognized at the time.

'Out of Time' is not only filled with illustrations (many in full color), but offers substantial text giving the historical context for the visual archeology of industrial, architectural and fanciful design for the world to come. Sections of the book are devoted to: the future as history, as visualized in illustrations for science fiction stories; and the future as style as depicted in architectural designs, renderings of transportation of all types (especially flying machines and space vehicles) and conceptions of

robots. An appendix is also included of brief biographical sketches of the artists whose work can be found in the book---most notably: Frank R. Paul, Alex Schomburg, Alexander Leydenfrost, Cheslay Bonestell, Virgil Finlay and Hannes Bok. There is also a bibliography. Thus we have a book---text and images---that has a cumulative effect of gee-whiz, gosh-wow exuberance. 'Out of Time; is a treasure trove that documents the optimistic imaginations of the writers, designers, architects

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Utopian Studies, published by Society for Utopian Studies on January 1, 2001. The length of the article is 664 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Out of Time: Designs for the Twentieth-Century Future.(Review) (book review)
Author: Merritt Abrash
Publication: Utopian Studies (Refereed)
Date: January 1, 2001
Publisher: Society for Utopian Studies
Volume: 12 Issue: 1 Page: 150

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Book Description

Recorded history is a finely-woven magic fabric of intricate lies about events predating the sixteenth century. There is not a single piece of evidence that can be reliably and independently traced back earlier than the eleventh century. This book details events that are substantiated by hard facts and logic, and validated by new astronomical research and statistical analysis of ancient sources.

Customer Reviews:

Calculations are only as good as your numbers.......2007-08-03

Yes, we can all agree that mainstream history is nearly 100% BS due to politics, economics, ego, problems with dating techniques, and various conspiracies. Agreed. But, I've been researching the distinct possibility that human history (in terms of civilizations) are much more ancient than we've been told, so coming across this book was very interesting to me. I wondered how Fomenko could be wrong (if at all) because he is very persuasive in his presentations. Then it dawned on me. If at previous times in prehistory, due to the various catastrophies that are well documented (comets, asteroids, planetary disruptions, plasma discharge, pole reversals, etc) the Earth was in a different position in relation to the sun, different tilt on its axis, different orbit, different rotation (in terms of velocity and DIRECTION), and the continents were in different positions, then would this not cause the ancients to see the sky (constellations) differently? In other words, is Fomenko making erronious assumptions about the physics of the Earth in pre-history, which then corrupt his data with regards to dating the relevant astrology? The last event to seriously disrupt our planet occured roughly 3500 years ago, according to other good researchers, so is it possible Fomenko has been confused by this? The vastly different physics of our planet in the not so distant past may explain this confusion, which is not to say the "mainstream" version of history is correct; on the contrary. I am not an expert in these fields, but wanted to see if this idea could spark discussion.

Pants on fire?.......2007-07-19

Will people ever read before spamming? Yes, Jesuits could not rewrite world history alone, they had help. Anyway, Dr Prof Acad A.Fomenko does not point to jesuits as the driving force of world wide history manipulation in published volumes 1,2,3;, actually he barely mentions the poor devils. Check it with 'Search inside' feature, please. China is rarely mentioned either, in fact, Dr Fomenko is completely eurocentric. Right, his theory contradicts all mainstream schools of history, because in their actual state they are all built on blatantly erroneus chronology. You don't need a mysterious cabal (conspiracy) to falsify history, the falsification is its modus operandi. It is inherent to history(ians) to falsify (distort) events, as it is inherent to humans to boast as it is inherent to power (authority) to legimize itself by referrring to glorious past made to its own order. Dr Prof Fomenko and team have identified scores of instances of such manipulation in Russian, European, etc.. history, and delivered valid statistical proof thereof. His own 'reconstruction' is completely another story. Forget c14 as a valid method of dating. W.Libby has initially discovered a brilliant method of INDEPENDENT dating. Too bad, c14 method has become a joke after a forced marrige with dendrochronology with consensual chronological scale inbuilt. Radiocarbon method can't stand blind tests, but is so very productive as a rubberstamp.

Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed. .......2007-04-09

There is no doubt that history as most know it is a sham, & institution's version of History both University & Church is fradulent & inaccurate. Everything was established with an agenda, The real "Dark Ages" are now when we have access to incredible amounts of information past authorities & more important 'common folk' didn't have but our institutions & educators are slow to evolve because of what has ignorantly & arrogantly been taught for too long. This is on many subjects not just Chronology.

For anyone to question "Why would a Mathematician have anything credible to say of History?" The answer is from Dr. Fomenko's preface in the book: "It would be worthwhile to remind the reader that in the XVI-XVII century Chronology was considered to be a subdivision of Mathematics." These volumes could possibly be some of the most important works to date & should be read by everyone with an interest in History, especially professors & educators who have a duty to the public. I have read both books & must say that 'Chronology 1' has some very eye opening & revolutionary information. Even if these volumes are part true the implications are profound & opens the doors to further investigations & questions which must be done. I speak several different lanquages & must say the logic Dr. Fomenko uses with "inflection" of words & words being read from left to right in one region & right to left in another then written backwards, the removal of vowels & get down to basics of words, or different cities & locations having the same name etc. is correct. Vowel usage has always been optional & varied, actually complicating linquistics & study. The first thing one has to understand is that words never had a fixed spelling in history like we do now, the spelling of words was mutable & regional, as well as names & titles of people were vast, varied & changed, NOTHING WAS FIXED or understood linear. Matters of Life & Death as well as financial profiteering yesterday & today were & are made with ignorant, illogical & conspiratorial views of history & reality, it's time people get closer to the Truth & society collectively grow up.

Very Interesting.......2007-03-07

It is a good proposal and I believe it will mature into something even better in the future. I think it deserves to be read.

History as Science Fiction.......2007-01-10

Anatoly Fomenko has written a very intriguing book, full of pictures, charts, and computer 'proof' of his thesis: backwards of AD900 we don't really know what happened or when. Between AD900 and AD1600 there is more certainty, but there is still a lot of fuzzy ground, and things don't get reliable until we get past the 1600's where the printing press made it very difficult for the perpetrators of this timeline manipulation to change anything that had been committed to print. The Dark Ages did not happen. Books were burned for a reason. One organization has doubled the actual length of its existence by expanding the real chronology. Read why.

I had always wondered why Christ died about AD33 and yet men waited until the 11th century to form the Knights Templar, the Cathars, etc and go after the Holy Land by force. Why the 1000 year gap? Turns out there wasn't more than a 10-12 year gap and he proves it using astronomy. This also implies that the planet is not as old as we have been told, and current Christian and other creationist scientists are already championing that idea without being aware of Fomenko's book. The two groups, creationist scientists and the Russian mathematical analysts corroborate each other. Fascinating.

Of course, all this flies in the face of what we have been told traditionally is the 'proper' chronology of western civilization, and most readers will experience 'cognitive dissonance' in reading this book. It means that our history going backwards from AD1600 becomes progressively more incorrect and unreliable until it cannot be trusted at all... in the space of 700-800 years.

Naturally, the curious, open-minded reader will want to know WHO did this, WHY, and did any of the events we think of as really ancient ever happen?
Dr. Fomenko is a respected scientist/mathematician at Moscow State University who has already answered these questions to the satisfaction of his initially skeptical colleagues. Most of them are now believers, a few still refuse to believe (the usual diehards), and of course the western press has ignored Fomenko's work -- for obvious reasons when you read the book. The ones who perpetrated this chronology ruse have a lot to answer for. They are still with us. That's why this book is a well-kept secret.

I gave the book a 4-star rating because I was unable to check out some of his claims; those I checked were as he said. But if even 1/3 of his claims are true, this punches a big hole in what we think is our history, the meaning of western civilization, our educational process (for repeating the ruse as gospel), and the trustworthiness of the organization that perpetrated this ruse, well-intentioned or not.

This book relates to current research into a Young Earth paradigm, to John Keel's discoveries about our planet, and Fr Malachi Martin's insights (in his now out-of-print books). We are indeed sheep who are manipulated and kept ignorant -- for a reason. While knowing what these men have to say may be the "booby prize" (as in: 'what can you do with this knowledge?'), it will provide interesting reading. Didn't someone say: "...and the Truth will set you free."?? For you to judge if this book contains the truth.

Reading and Writing: A Personal Account (New York Review Books Collections)

Average customer rating:

The author as an enigma
Random
Reding and Writing By V.S. Naipaul

Reading and Writing: A Personal Account (New York Review Books Collections)
V.S. Naipaul
Manufacturer: New York Review Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Authors | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

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General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0940322382
Release Date: 2000-02-28

Book Description

I was eleven, no more, when the wish came to me to be a writer; and then very soon it was a settled ambition. But for the young V. S. Naipaul, there was a great distance between the wish and its fulfillment. To become a writer, he would have to find ways of understanding three very different cultures: his family's half-remembered Indian homeland, the West Indian colonial society in which he grew up, and the wholly foreign world of the English novels he read.

In this essay of literary autobiography, V. S. Naipaul sifts through memories of his childhood in Trinidad, his university days in England, and his earliest attempts at writing, seeking the experiences of life and reading that shaped his imagination and his growth as a writer. He pays particular attention to the traumas of India under its various conquerors and the painful sense of dereliction and loss that shadows writers' attempts to capture the country and its people in prose.

Naipaul's profound reflections on the relations between personal or historical experience and literary form, between the novel and the world, reveal how he came to discover both his voice and the subjects of his writing, and how he learned to turn sometimes to fiction, sometimes to the travel narrative, to portray them truthfully. Along the way he offers insights into the novel's prodigious development as a form for depicting and interpreting society in the nineteenth century and its diminishing capacity to do the same in the twentiethÑa task that, in his view, passed to the creative energies of the early cinema.

As a child trying to read, I had felt that two worlds separated me from the books that were offered to me at school and in the libraries: the childhood world of our remembered India, and the more colonial world of our city. ... What I didn't know, even after I had written my early books of fiction ... was that those two spheres of darkness had become my subject. Fiction, working its mysteries, by indirections finding directions out, had led me to my subject. But it couldn't take me all the way. -V.S. Naipaul, from Reading & Writing

Customer Reviews:

The author as an enigma.......2002-11-08

I was introduced to V.S. Naipaul a number of years ago principally through his non-fiction. He is an elegant writer with unique perspective and insights. Although his unusual background is well-known to his audience, the first half of this spare book (64 pages) focuses on how his desire to become a writer ultimately developed substance. There are some wonderful passages about his father's habit of reading portions of books to his son that emphasized the particular qualities or character of the author. I found myself wanting to learn more about this relationship because it seems that it explains a good deal about Naipual's interests and his style.

The second portion of the book is a bit more disjointed. It opens with Naipaul speaking about the two Indias: the political India (of Ghandi and the freedom movement) and the personal India (of his grandparents)and how it has been represented in literature and how that representation misses the essence of the country. The final portion is an interesting analysis of the evolution of the novel and how Naipaul views it as a derivative form that is nearing the end of what it can do.

The first half of the boook was the most valuable to me as it added to my understanding of the writer and his craft and particularly about Naipaul as an artist. If you enjoy his work this should be of interest to you.

Random.......2002-04-12

I listened to Naipaul's nobel lecture, and found many of the things he touched on in that speech echoed in this short work. Naipaul speaks at length about growing up in Trinidad, and of the people he encounters. He speaks about his education. He also speaks about his father's short stories. Reading this book gives one a good sense of what led Naipaul to his first novels, as well as what led him to his later ones. The somewhat puzzling ending wraps up the writer's pessimism re: the future of the novel, which I found disingenuous. It's both unconvincing and the ultimate ingratitude to the form that won him the Nobel Prize.

Reding and Writing By V.S. Naipaul.......2000-07-10

`Reading and Writing ` by V. S. Naipaul ( Pub. New York Review Of Books ,2000) A review by V. Ramsamooj Gosine.

In spite of its brevity, Reading and Writing ` by V.S.Naipaul is compulsive reading for anyone who is interested in the development of this writer and by extension other writers.

This short work of non-fiction ( 64 pages), examines critically the strands of history which have shaped and reshaped Naipaul's thoughts and ideas . For example, Naipaul pays glowing tribute to his father whom he saw writing patiently and enthusiastically. Little Vidia listened to his father read stories and this greatly influenced him . So much was Vidia influenced that at age 11 he had already decided that he wanted to become a writer. It was a noble thing and he wanted to be part of it.The book also sifts through memories of his childhood, his days at Oxford, and his earliest attempts at writing. We are all influenced by the landscape we grew up in. It is an inescapable fact and Naipaul is now sharing that experience with his readers, at the same time, he is looking at the material from a distance.

This reviewer would have preferred a longer work in which Naipaul develops his major concerns on which his imagination fed: the Ramlila of The Ramayan, his anthology of Literature, his father's love for books which he got Naipaul interested in , Mr Worm, his primary school teacher, and the cinema. The basic themes are there and only readers who are acquainted with the material could readily understand the discussion. Those who have lived outside the colonial system would have certain problems.

Not surprisingly, Naipaul thinks that education ( in his days ) produced only crammers , not real thinking men. This is the sort of opinion Naipaul forms when he analyses what he himself has been through.

Even after Naipaul had written his earlier books and was set on the road to becoming an established writer, he was still searching, examining and analysing everything around him , including definitions. One gets the strong feeling that Naipaul is not the sort of writer who readily accepts things easily. Evelyn Waugh defined fiction as ` experienced totally transformed ` while Joseph Conrad ( a writer Naipaul admires ) saw the novel as a `fabrication of events which properly speaking are accidents only.'

Naipaul questions and draws his own conclusions. In this way, he does nothing impulsively and accepts nothing without reservation , but shapes and reshapes. In parts of `Reading and Writing' Naipaul shares his own attitude to new raw material. And this is definitely worth looking at.

In this autobiographical piece, subtitled "A Personal Account,' and written for the Charles Douglas Home Memorial Trust, the reader may have stumbled upon bits and pieces of information before but Naipaul painstakingly organizes his information l in such a way that each idea contributes and guides the reader along.

`Reading and Writing' could be read in one sitting but truly , the work should be read slowly and meticulously. There is just so much to absorb and to consider if one is really to comprehend the mind of a great, gifted writer. Naipaul often presents different viewpoints , which invite the reader to weigh and consider just as he did when the material first presented itself to him. In this way, Naipaul admits the reader into the curious laboratory from which he emerged.

In Part II, Naipaul continues a discussion - the importance of the novel - which he has raised elsewhere. He focuses on the novel and its uses in the later 19th century and now wonders whether the novel has served its usefulness. Interestingly enough, he quotes long passages from Charles Dickens and R.K.Narayan and makes pronouncements on their fiction and in all this, Naipaul the enquirer is still engaging his mind in discussion. What `Reading and Writing' reveals more than anything else is that Naipaul, the artist, is always challenging his mind to get at the best. Serious writers , especially the young, should read closely his conclusions. Naipaul is not unfair. His roving critical eye would not permit him to write second rate pieces. It is the sort of standard he places on himself.

Naipaul thinks that,' Literature ,like all living art is always on the move....No literary form , the Shakespeare play, the essay, the work of history - can continue for a very long time at the same pitch of inspiration .' Harsh but realistic ! Is Naipaul then on a quest for another form to carry out his work ? And is he attempting to create a new form to mirror the world ? He partly answers the question in the new form he uses in his later travel books, (eg. India: A Million Mutinies Now ), but from all appearances ,he is still evolving something.

`Reading and Writing ` opens up a new world for us to examine. It is not the world he created but it is colonial Trinidad , India and Motherland , England. This is certainly not a text to be rushed through, short as it may be, but it certainly gives an insight into Naipaul, the writer.

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