One thing Narnia did not have is a lot of human towns. In fact, I can think of only two: the Telmarine settlements of Beruna and Beaversdam. There’s also a town called Chippingford in The Last Battle but whether it is human or not is unclear. There’s also some kind of human settlement around Cair …
The Fab Four in their Western cartoon version (above) from the 1965 Saturday morning cartoon, and an Eastern version of them as Japanese manga figures, below. One thing about the Beatles is that their song titles evolved over time. Here’s a listing from A Hard Day’s Night, released in 1964: And then Abby Road (1969): …
I have to admit this old poster is pretty creepy, not because of the flying brain with its two beady eyes, but the Satanic face of the child with its filed, oddly spaced teeth. At least, I think it’s a child. Old, schlocky, crowd-pleasing, over-the-top movies are a special interest of mine, which is why …
Sometimes when you DM or write fantasy, you need to list books in a character’s library. Books that sound obscure, magical, historical, singular. Tolkien has his imaginary Book of Redmarch, Lovecraft his Necronomicon and Pnakotic Manuscripts. Here’s a randomgenned list of some more. Library Books, Fantasy Style A Man’s Tome of Migford Four Books …
Atompunk computers deserve their own nomenclature. Running on vacuum tubes and early transistors, and programmed with miles of magnetic tape and punch cards, in the media they were mostly objects of menace. Many classic SF stories of the age revolve around artificial intelligence taking charge of humans and becoming their overlord. In the movie Colossus: …
Atompunk robots (those in media from 1945 – 1965) tend to have the same sort of names. Short ones like Gort, cutesy ones like Robbie or Tobor (“Robot” spelled backwards) or functional ones combining scientific terms with letters and numbers. That’s the sort I was after here with this randomly generated list. These names showed …
Ursula K. LeGuin’s political science fiction novel The Dispossessed has as its subtitle “An Ambiguous Utopia.” But screw that. Isn’t this a whamdoodle of a cover? Twin worlds, close enough to touch, one lush and green, one red like Mars but cratered like the Moon, done up in a riotous rainbow of colors? (I’ll do …
You have to look closely at this map until it begins to look a little familiar…. (It’s Europe with water and land masses reversed and relabeled as new countries.) Like the map, here’s some places that currently don’t exist, but could. Imaginary Places German cities / towns Ulmesslen, Münrach, Spargán, Amsprechtdanberg, Munsilacht Icelandic cities …
The plasticity of fairy tales is demonstrated by these illustrations of Beauty and the Beast from over the years. In the original fairy tale, the Beast is never explicitly described, so artists had to use their imaginations. From the top left, going clockwise, he’s a spotted hyena, a wolf-boar, a very weird walrus-mole hybrid, and …
The 1980s were, perhaps, the Golden Age of the teen movie. Exemplified by John Hughes, these slightly raunchy, traditionally romantic movies had wholesome names like Sweet Sixteen and Pretty in Pink that belied the nasty origins of their conception. Which came from the pages of The National Lampoon, of which Hughes was a writer. Yes, …