Jakob's status update spurred me to finally mention just how amazingly retro sci-fi 2016 has been. There's so much stuff that's been going on this year (or late last year) that feels like it came straight out of a Golden Age sci-fi comic.



Let's start with what Jakob was talking about: lifeforms that eat radiation. Yeah, we've known about them for a while, but seriously— take a moment and think about that. Lifeforms that eat radiation. "Eat".



Next up: the space nation of Asgardia. Sure, it's not a legit country as of yet, but the fact we are even seriously considering this is unbelievable. More than that, though— Asgardia?! Could you not pick a more retro sci-fi name for a goddamn space nation than Asgardia?



Then, let's take a little time to discussion fusion energy. We haven't produced it on a commercial scale yet, but we're close, and one of the devices that's helped us get so close to that dream is called— I shit you not— the Wendelstein 7-X Stellarator.

Even when I first heard that, I thought it sounded so corny.

It's like this damn world of hairless apes is fucking with me some days.

This shit is ripped straight outta the Golden Age. Like, read a Silver Age comic or Golden Age sci fi short, and "the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator fusion reactor creates million-degree helium plasma" would blend in perfectly with all the other technobabble. Like, you could post this to /r/RetroFuturism, it's that fuckin' ace.

....

True! But tokamak doesn't have the same 1950s sci fi ring to it like "stellarator" does. Not to mention the German [Mad] Scientist ring that "Wendelstein 7-X" brings.

I still feel that way. The "Wendelstein 7-X" sounds exactly like what an ex-Nazi mad scientist would come up with, something you'd hear a government scientist babble about in a '50s-era B movie.



What else happened to prove we live in the '50s idea of the future?

Well, son... There were even many comments from redditors about how, when they were growing up, they always knew that a real reusable space craft looked like the space shuttle, not one of those old-school "land straight on its booster" style vertical-landing rocket ships.



And then we get to see a real life classic rocket ship land upright. Like, it even looked exactly like how we used to imagine it, full stop.



Clearly, we're not living in the world of Flash Gordon or Buck Rodgers quite yet— but we're getting there. That's what's so surprising to me. We always talk about how much our world resembles cyberpunk fiction while ignoring that our world also mimics retrofuturist works.