Science fiction always gets the future wrong. Or at least, it always gets the dates wrong. 2001: A Space Odyssey—sorry, haven’t seen a spinning bicycle wheel space station yet. Space 1999—we’re ten years past due on that sprawling moon base. And don’t even get us started on George Orwell’s 1984—we’re so far away from being a constantly monitored culture of brainwashed warmongers it’s positively laughable… Um, anyway, the original Star Trek series was set in like the twenty-third century or something, so its predictions still have a shot at coming true. Above and below are assorted matte paintings showing what that future will look like. Beam us up.

Just to show that virtually no author escaped the wave of sexulaized art that swept over publishing during the 1950s, here are two pimped out book covers for George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London and 1984. Orwell was already a literary immortal by the time these editions hit the streets, but hey—it’s never too late for an extreme makeover. The covers aren’t dishonest, per-se, but trying to make these two extremely important books look like John D. MacDonald capers is a bit sly. But at least we know the publishers took the propagandist lessons of 1984 to heart. From the age of doublethink—greetings!