DEVO in a promo film for 1979's "Duty Now for the Future."

"Temporary Mars Base," a 1970 artist's concept from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.

"Blade Runner" concept art by Syd Mead, as seen in Starlog, November 1992.

Stanley Tigerman’s Instant City concept: "Where do you sleep and where do you dine?"

Spooky sci-fi art by Colin Hay, Bruce Pennington, Peter Jones, and Rudolf Sieber-Lonati.

Syd Mead: Future Pastime Transamerica Pyramid Annex Gallery 535 Washington St., San Francisco 10/9 - 12/17, Weds-Sun, 11am-6pm Opening Night October 8th, 6-8pm Syd Mead: Future Pastime is set to arrive in San Francisco, thirty years after Mead’s last major appearance in the Bay. It is a homecoming to a city that has spent the last three decades building the tomorrow Mead spent his life imagining. Here, in the capital of the industry now most responsible for deciding what comes next, Mead’s paintings pose quiet but pointed questions: what happened to the future we were promised, and what became of the optimism that once powered it? Curated by William Corman & Elon Solo Exhibition design by MAD Architects Presented at the Transamerica Pyramid Annex Gallery, in association with Estate Real For more info, visit futurepastime.net

THE THING, 1982, poster art by Drew Struzan.

Replies like this make the whole thing worth it.

Puppeteering a STAR WARS cantina creature, early 1977.

"Plan 9 from Outer Space" poster from Argentina, 1961.

Rolling hills and a winding river inside a colossal space colony, imagined in 1975 NASA concept art by Rick Guidice.

Behind the scenes of STAR WARS.

Paradise for 10,000 inside a wheel-shaped space colony. 1975 concept art by Rick Guidice for NASA's Ames Research Center.

Welcome to the future: EPCOT Center opened to the public 44 years ago today. Walt Disney's dream of an Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow was planned as a real city, but after his death in 1966, it became a theme park instead.

Turkish poster for "Son of Frankenstein." Artwork by Mahmut Yagci.

A transparent dome over Manhattan, proposed by Buckminster Fuller and Shoji Sadao in 1960. Two miles wide and about a mile high, it would turn Midtown into a climate-controlled paradise.

IBM System/360 mainframe computer in Garching, Germany, 1965. Photo by Rolf Herkner.

Syd Mead's "City on a Megabeam" concept, 1983. His idea: crossing a city should be as easy as riding an elevator. So he painted one built along a single giant beam.