Recommended Reading & Resources
Period alternate history
- Nick Ottens, "World War III Without Missiles," Never Was Magazine (March 31, 2019)
- Nick Ottens, "Cold War on Steroids," Never Was Magazine (June 9, 2019)
- Nick Ottens, "How to Turn the Cold War Hot," Never Was Magazine (October 24, 2020)
Websites
- 70s Sci-Fi Art
- A Visual History of the Future: Darren Garrett reviews past predictions of the future.
- CONALRAD: All things atomic.
- Fuldapocalypse Fiction: @Coiler reviews Third World War and related fiction.
- James Lileks' pop-culture museum. Has everything from commercial ephemera to 1930s-70s ads to postcards of main-street America.
- My Retro Future
- Paleofuture: The history of the future by Matt Novak.
- Plan59: Museum of midcentury illustration.
- SpyVice: Secret agents, bachelor pads and mini skirts by Jason Whiton.
- Tales of Future Past: David Szondy explores midcentury predictions of the future.
- The Counterfactual History Review: News, analysis and commentary from the world of "what if?" by Gavriel Rosenfeld.
- Ultra Swank: Kitsch, chic, swank and camp living of the 1940s-70s.
- Urban Century: Vintage color photos of America.
Comments
This is just a start. Please recommend additional readings and resources in the comments!
I like Stefan's Diesel City.
Absolutely! I'll add it to the Recommended Reading & Resources under Diesel.
The unbuilt works of polish architect Oskar Hansen should be included here. In the Eastern Bloc the socialist paradise was supposed to be realised by 1980, and Hansen was one of the architects that was allowed to realize a few projects for this planned future. But most of his proposals was never built.
https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/oskar-hansen-and-open-form
I have mentioned the other 3 in the Diesel section, as they are suited to that timeline, but I shall share this one here for those interested in black and white fashion catalog images of the era:
Everyday Fashions of the Fifties, by JoAnne Olian, published by Dover Fashion and Costumes
Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner by Daniel Ellsberg is a good resource on nuclear issues of the period, as are A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schreiver and the Ultimate Weapon by Neil Sheehan, Making the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes, and The General vs. the President; MacArthur and Truman at the Brink of Nuclear War by H. W. Brands.