What New Worlds look like

Across Plastic Futures, we have often discussed what the future looks like (or, more precisely, how it is imagined and depicted). In Plastic Futures 1, for instance, we noticed that images of the future (often sci-fi) quite often involve grandiose scenes of enormity in which people become minute figures. So, in Plastic Futures 2 with the next group of participants, I had them all equipped with little white 1:98 scale model people, who became subjects for many photographs in 1:1 scaled scenes. This was carried through to the exhibition (check that out via this post), where we set up a USB web-cam with a little person attached to its foreground, that one could move about on a table full of props to create images of the future, projected at large on the wall.

I was reminded of all this tonight, when I stumbled across a web page (in a site by Phil Stephensen-Payne, Galactic Central Publications) that outlines a history of a future fiction anthology magazine ‘New Worlds’. As it was a frequent publishing venue for J. G. Ballard, my curiosity was aroused. What I love most about this web page, though, is the catalogue of magazine covers, which run from 1939 to 1997. Have a look, and in scanning through the years, you can garner a sense of the development of what the future looked like across the decades,
starting with this one from 1939: and ending in this one from 1997:

Most of my favourites are, perhaps unsurprisingly, from the late 60s. This is not, however, because they shout Bigness, but because of the combined abstraction and intimacy.
Here are a few: