I’ve just unpacked a wonderful acrylic sculpture by Gary Haas – it is not the one you see pictured here, but it’s very similar – and it’s an amazing and beautiful piece of work. More pictures of this one are at his Deviant Art page, and the sculpture pictured here is currently for sale at Etsy.

Gary carves these from solid blocks of acrylic using tools that I’m trying to picture in my mind. I know that they’re rotary tools (which describes a heck of a lot of powered tools, when you think about it) but in order to do the undercuts it seems as though a cutting bit would have to deploy whirling flanges of death after it was already inserted. Which, you know, is really cool. In fact I’ll continue to believe in retractable whirling flanges of death even after I find out I’m totally wrong.

Because some things just ought to exist. And to get back on topic, this sculpture is one of ‘em.

Gary seems to think I’m inspirational, and I sure won’t argue with him ("Whirling flanges of Death!") Either way I’m awfully glad to have this in my office. My advice: you should have one too.

Update: he’s just posted a photo of mine at Deviant art. It’s here.

Technorati Tags: sculpture, gary haas, sci fi, science fiction, retro future, retro futuristic, acrylic, carving, carved, cube, whirling flanges of death

Retropolis offers a wide variety of accommodations to the tourist or traveler: from five star suites in the floating Galacticon hotel, through the more utilitarian, blastproof rooms made available to the conventioneers of The Society of Demented Research Technicians – and finally, to these modern and streamlined sleeping tubes at hotels like downtown’s "Tubular Belle’s".

Sleek and affordable, these tubes bathe the guest in a sonic shower that cleans both sleeper and clothing. Visitors awake refreshed and ready for a new tomorrow – helped along by the hot, strong coffee that tops off the hotel’s complimentary breakfast.

This all happened because of a series of blog posts at the Posthuman Blues blog …there, for example.

Though I’d never spent a lot of time thinking about Women In Tubes – and really, I haven’t, at least not since the seventies – once I did think about them, I realized that they’re all over the covers of pulp science fiction magazines from the Golden Age of, well, pulp science fiction magazines.

And I started to feel like less of a man because I’d never put women in tubes into my own pictures. I mean, obviously, it’s fundamental, right?

But it’s not enough to just stick a women in a tube. Not even if it were the seventies. What the heck are they doing in there? How did they get into a freaking tube, in the first place? It can’t be like that ship in a bottle thing: that would be disgusting. How do they get out? And, as always, who stands to benefit from keeping all these women in tubes?

So I’ve tried to answer these questions, and while in the act, I made the tubes coeducational. Because that’s how I roll.

The title’s from a song of 1933, by Olive Levine & Beany Miller. Because that’s also how I roll.

Available on posters, archival prints, and postcards.

Technorati Tags: retro science fiction, golden age, women in tubes, tube women, girls in tubes, retropolis, retro future, retro futuristic, streamline, pulp magazines, cryogenics

Tee Junction has posted its list of the 50 Best Steampunk-Inspired T-Shirts, of which there are actually 56, and of which 3.5% are from my Retropolis Transit Authority shop. Even though, as I’ve mentioned before, this ain’t Steampunk.

But heck, it’s an honor just to be nominated. Now how did he miss those "Airship Ballast" shirts?

Technorati Tags: t-shirts, mad scientist, steampunk, 50 best steampunk tees, retro future

Elvish by `Saimain on deviantART

Artist Adele Lorienne S. (Saimain at Deviant Art) has posted this wonderful drawing in which she used my book of knotwork borders in exactly the way that I’d hoped people would.

She chose one of the art nouveau flavored designs, for obvious reasons: if Mucha had been an Irishman, we might have seen more like this!

I’m just so pleased to see this. It’s exactly what I hoped for when I was working on the book.

Technorati Tags: celtic knotwork, art nouveau, deviant art, Adele Lorienne S., art, drawing, border

After a series of delays, Go Hero’s ultra-detailed 1:6 scale Buck Rogers action figure is finally rocketing out of his warehouse.

Hop over there to gander at the features – everything from a detachable, glass space helmet to an internal audio device that plays old Buck Rogers radio shows (or whatever you upload to it via USB). Neat!

His gun is (of course!) a replica of Buck’s iconic Atomic Ray Pistol… and Go Hero is also selling a 10″ version of that famous ray gun. In fact it’s not an exact replica, since it combines features of the original toy Atomic ray gun with the postwar Disintegrator Pistol. Comes complete with pops and sparks.

And still coming down the retro-futuristic pike is Go Hero’s 1:6 scale Flash Gordon, a similarly detailed 1930’s version of the character based on Buster Crabbe in the famous movie serials.

All in all, a pretty wonderful line of retro space heroes and replicas, all ready and eager to defend your desk from evil emperors and the Awful Green Things From Space.

Technorati Tags: buck rogers, flash gordon, action figure, ray gun, atomic ray pistol, disintegrator pistol, statue, retro space, sci fi, adventure, pulp, movie serial, comics, science fiction