Hippies in Space: Some '70s Flashbacks

Jesse Walker | February 12, 2008

In the days before camcorders and YouTube, fans of countercultural DIY video put their hopes in Sony Portapaks and cable access television. Howard Rheingold has just posted one artifact from that era, shot in 1976 and starring a young Rheingold as "Howard K. Martian, extraterrestrial anthropologist."

On a related note (sort of), here's an online edition of Space Colonies, a book published in 1977 by the CoEvolution Quarterly. The Quarterly was a spinoff from the Whole Earth Catalog, which wasn't just a bible for the back-to-the-land movement but offered a helping hand to those who wanted to go up-to-the-skies.

Comments

ktc2|2.12.08 @ 10:32AM|#

The title on this thread just made me remember the movie "Dark Star".

The ultimate hippies in space flick.

JSF|2.12.08 @ 11:05AM|#

The ultimate hippies in space flick.

How 'bout them druggies flying the spaceship in Heavy Metal? I think that was patterned after that scene in Cheech & Chong's Up in Smoke.

Or, the whole Trippin the Rift series...

|2.12.08 @ 11:12AM|#

Far-Out Space Nuts? Quark?

Franklin Harris|2.12.08 @ 11:15AM|#

Speaking of the 1970s, Howard the Duck creator Steve Gerber has died. Waugh.

Franklin Harris|2.12.08 @ 11:16AM|#

Far-Out Space Nuts? Quark?

The Lost Saucer?

ktc2|2.12.08 @ 11:21AM|#

Teach it Phenomenology Doolittle. Phenomenology.

kinnath|2.12.08 @ 11:24AM|#

Muppets in Space, you just can't do better than that.

Episiarch|2.12.08 @ 11:29AM|#

Muppets Pigs in Space, you just can't do better than that.

Needed to be a little more old-school.

Mike Laursen|2.12.08 @ 11:36AM|#

Oh, man. I have a copy of Space Colonies right here on the bookshelf. CoEvolution Quarterly/Whole Earth Review was my favorite magazine of all times. There'll never be anything quite as eclectic.

ktc2|2.12.08 @ 11:39AM|#

LOL.

P I G S in S P A A A A C E!

kinnath|2.12.08 @ 12:21PM|#

I forgot it was Pigs . . .

kinnath.|2.12.08 @ 12:33PM|#

To clarify:

Pigs in Space was a recurring skit on The Muppet Show.

Muppets from Space was a feature film.

I had to google it. I am so ashamed that I don't have every muppet enterprise cataloged in my head.

Episiarch|2.12.08 @ 12:34PM|#

kinnath, there is a Muppets from Space movie from 1999, well after Jim Henson's death. That's what I thought you were referring to.

|2.12.08 @ 11:27PM|#

What? No love for "Silent Running"? Where Bruce Dern's character offs his crewmates and tries to save the space forest geodesic domes with the robots; Huey, Dewey and Luis.