Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/05/04/gallery-of-science-fiction-int.html
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Remember when the little green triangles on the original Battlestar Galactica series looked incredibly high tech?
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That’s pretty extensive reference. Now the next 500 will continue to look like those.
I thought the circuit boards and the fake 3D wireframes in 2001 were awesome.
What’s interesting is some skew more towards user interfaces that help the main character control a ship. or some other object. Those tend to be cryptic, since the audience isn’t expected to follow the details of how to guide the thing in question.
Others are more on the data visualization side, and they usually fill a storytelling role. “As soon as we clear that moon we can fire the big gun.” Those have to be as uncryptic as possible, since the audience is expected to get information from them.
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How can the Empire ever be defeated? They have vector graphics!
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Of course they’re similar in many ways; they’re all supplying similar information to the same humanoids, give or take a wrinkly nose and/or other latex foibles ^^’.
Even if they weren’t directly human, if they used similar sensory schema at similar frequencies (highly unlikely as that is in reality) their info/control systems would probably be quite recognizable to us, especially if their manipulative appendage(s) are at all comprehensible.
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“The enemy can not push a button… if you disable his hand.”
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Oh, this is one of the things the movie changed that made me sad. I know Verhoven wanted the plot to move along, and it DOES really fit with Zim’s character, but it changed the philosophy of that scene. The answer in the novel (as best as I can remember) was “we’re not teaching you how to use dangerous weapons, we are teaching you to be dangerous men”. That training with melee weapons isn’t intended to produce melee weapons experts, but instead to change the mindset of the recruits to prepare them with dealing and receiving horrific violence.
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I didn’t know that; which is odd because I used to work for that well known toy soldier company that stole “Space Marines” from that story, and aliens from that Giger fella, Dark Elves from Marvel, and…
The movie got played a lot on the work bar’s big screen, and was blatantly a big influence, but I’ve never gotten around to reading the novel, though I have read lots of other Heinlein. He’s become a bit of an acquired taste these days, but I do love that movie.
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My “favorite” interfaces are the ones where pictures and moving images appear instantly, but text slowly sputters out like from a teletype… Babyon 5, others… 
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