
The aesthetics of science fiction spaceship design - grzm
https://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/handle/10012/4935
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aresant
One of the most unexpected & interesting "history of space aesthetics" to me
came from the recent documentary "Jodorowsky's Dune" (which is awesome!).

The film recounts the attempt by avant-garde director Alejandro Jodorowsky to
turn Dune into an epic, 12 hour film in the mid 70s.

He assembled an incredible cast of conceptual artists and designers including
Moebius (jean giraud), Chris Foss, HR Giger , and others and designed a giant
illustrated tome laying out the shot-by-shot epic, largely penciled by Moebius
and filled in with art from the other contributors.

Producers scoffed at the scope of the vision but ultimately the team of people
that Jodorowsky got together went on to design the art & aesthetic for seminal
credited films including Alien, AI, Gaurdian's of the Galaxy, Tron, etc.

And even more broadly this group is credited with the inspiration behind the
aesthetic of Star Wars(1), Blade Runner(2), and more recently Fifth
Element.(3) as their giant tome of incredible, outstanding sci-fi conceptual
art was passed through Hollywood in the giant, fabled Tome.

As a nod to the importance of Moebius' designs in particular, the imperial
probe droid in Empire Strikes Back is a direct copy transfer of one of his
creations (4)

I was already a hopeless fan-boy of Moebius & Jodorowsky thanks to "The Incal"
\- which in and of itself is one of the most inspiring pieces of storytelling
and graphic art I've come across, but Jodorowsky's Dune cemented to me that
the early works by these teams are the true inspiration for much of the visual
sci-fi aesthetic that has predominated 50+ years of pop culture.

(1) [https://kitbashed.com/blog/chris-foss-and-the-triangular-
tot...](https://kitbashed.com/blog/chris-foss-and-the-triangular-
totalitarianism) & [http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2015/7-famous-sci-fi-movies-
inf...](http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2015/7-famous-sci-fi-movies-influenced-
by-jodorowskys-dune/)

(2)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tomorrow_(comics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tomorrow_\(comics\))

(3)
[https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=376571](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=376571)

(4) [https://kitbashed.com/blog/moebius](https://kitbashed.com/blog/moebius)

~~~
niedzielski
Thanks for the interesting background. Do you know if the "Tome" has been
published?

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mechatronix00
Obviously, this thesis is much more in depth but it reminded me of this fun
video titled, "Why Every Movie Space Battle Is Wrong! (Because Science w/ Kyle
Hill)"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea89t9U2ZJk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea89t9U2ZJk)

~~~
ansible
Yeah.

As I learned more about science and actual spacecraft, I got increasingly
frustrated with science fiction and anything related to spacecraft. But there
is a spectrum of realism.

For example, with Babylon 5, the fighters had inertia, and would often face in
the direction of the enemy while travelling in another direction. In contrast,
Star Wars spacecraft fly around as if they were aircraft in an atmosphere,
which isn't surprising given that older war movies were an inspiration for its
battle scenes.

Later, I was reading about molecular nanotechnology, and then considered the
idea that un-augmented meatbags like us travelling among the stars is absurd.
From an energy expenditure perspective and practically perspective. Basically,
if we have the technology to travel to the stars, we won't be humans anymore.

And these days, I just look for shows that feature "good writing" in the sense
of dialog and overall plot.

~~~
henrikschroder
I liked the Gap Series by Stephen Donaldson, he gets zero-g and distances
right. I can't remember if their weapons were energy or mass, but space
battles essentially boiled down to rolling your ship to always present your
best charged shields and damage absorbers towards the enemy.

I'm also a big fan of the Culture series by Iain Banks, it's a lot of high-
high-high-tech technobabble, but he gets some physical basics right, it
doesn't matter if your ships is enormously more technologically advanced than
someone else's, if they can project enough energy onto you, you will be
vaporized. He also gets the timescales and distances correctly, because none
of it runs on a human decision-making timescale, it's all sentient weapons and
AI's, so a close quarters battle is over in seconds.

~~~
zlynx
I liked that bit where the ship's Mind is replaying the battle in slow motion
for the humans.

As I remember the story, the actual battle was a loud bang and a violent jerk.

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mirimir
I'm surprised that there's no mention of rotation for "artificial gravity".
Peter Watts, for example, uses some realistic designs in his work. So does
Alastair Reynolds.

~~~
Jedd
Agreed.

It popped up in The Martian, but some of the early 'hard sci-fi' I read -
Stephen Donaldson's The Gap series - described similar designs. Rendezvous
with Rama would be an earlier, more famous example. I've been surprised that
it doesn't show up way more often.

~~~
mirimir
It's just cooler to assume non-rotational artificial gravity, I guess.

Edit: And I do love Watts' design, because it handles the acceleration to
coast transition so well.

~~~
spurcell93
Additionally, the implications of non rotational artificial gravity are more
significant in a science fiction context. In foundation, Asimov regards
"gravitics" as the pinnacle technological achievement of man (psychohistory
notwithstanding).

~~~
mirimir
True. And inertia management, which allows arbitrarily high acceleration, with
no internal effects. Reynolds and Banks, for example. And they're an
interesting juxtaposition, in that Reynolds tended to paint AIs as evil, while
Banks' Minds are overall decent.

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Animats
The program written for the thesis produces output that looks like a low-rez
procedural city generator. There are lots of those good enough to make a city
that can be flown over. Few can make a halfway convincing city at ground
level. (Although this one [1] isn't bad.)

Procedural generation of natural terrain with vegetation is very well
developed. Cities and buildings, not so much.

[1]
[https://github.com/pboechat/ProceduralCity](https://github.com/pboechat/ProceduralCity)

~~~
TeMPOraL
A big reason I could never get immersed in flight simulators, both civil and
combat. I'm all fine, flying in my plane/chopper around mountains, rescuing
people/shooting bad guys, and then suddenly... what on Earth is that ugly,
low-poly (or flat) collection of rectangles? Is that... a "city"?

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pacaro
So this is all or mostly American movies and tv? I was hoping for classic sci-
fi cover art

~~~
billfruit
They do cover some of it an appendix. Even video game ships are only briefly
covered, in the appendix.

But I think, no mention of the Warhammer 40k universe though.

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pacaro
I think that I’m just uncovering a personal tacit assumption. I grew up in a
household with a lot of 60s and 70s sci-fi books and magazines, so that was
where my mind immediately went. I also need to have my arm twisted to admit
that star wars is sci-fi. I suspect someone could write an amazing series of
coffee table books threading all this together, comics, magazines, games, tv,
movies. It would be glorious

~~~
projektir
Yeah, I think Star Wars belongs more in the category of "futuristic space"
than "sci-fi", really, but one can't really argue that it would influence sci-
fi ship designs.

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oneplane
I missed StarGate references in there! Plenty of ships in those series.

~~~
projektir
Quite a few things are missing. And as someone else pointed out, very American
slanted.

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okket
(2010)

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Papirola
no Moya ?

~~~
projektir
But the dragonfly ship is mentioned, don't see that every day...

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skookumchuck
"In this thesis, we present a detailed analysis of the conventions that appear
in fictional spaceship design, including a discussion of their origins, their
uses in emulating certain traits, and reasons these conventions might be
followed or ignored."

Is there any further proof needed that we live in an enormously wealthy
society that we can afford to pay people to engage in such frivolous research.

It's also proof that AI will not result in net unemployment, because it will
just open up the possibility of more of these sorts of frippery jobs.

