In 1923, R.U.R (Rossum's Universal Robots) by Czech playwright, Carel Kapek, opened at St. Martin's Theatre and caused a sensation.

First written in 1920, Kapek's play told the story of how a scientist created 'machine men' or 'robots' (in the first use of the word) to help with menial tasks except, in a somewhat startling turn of events, these humanoids soon rose up against their masters. We recently scanned a selection of images taken from our magazines on this play, thinking how pertinent it seems in our world today, with AI gaining alarming momentum in all areas of life, and presenting both opportunities and challenges to the human race.

The idea of what mankind might achieve in the future, and what horrors it might face, or advantages it might enjoy, has long been a subject of fascination for writers, thinkers and artists and we have plenty in the archive charting the history of the future. The majority of R.U.R images came from the ILN archive, and the magazines in this collection continued to report on the development of robotics and other technological ideas. There are some great examples such as G.H. Davies's famous 1928 diagram of a well-behaved robot displayed at the Model Engineering Exhibition, which was able to rise, bow and make a 'speech' - or George Studdy's famous cartoon dog, Bonzo, being overwhelmed by robotic clones of himself in an illustration that appeared in The Sketch just a few weeks after R.U.R opened. In addition to this are prototype diagrams of Concorde, predictions of futuristic fashion, timesaving housework devices, and some very optimistic suggestions for an airport in central London!

For a particularly colourful view of the future, then we recommend viewing Hilary Evans's incredible collection of science-fiction magazines from the early twentieth century, where titles such as Startling Stories and Astounding Science Fiction imagined little green men, evil masterminds, miniaturised people and all manner of monstrous possibilities.

Around the turn of the last century, there was intense speculation about what the future might hold. A favourite example of this is a selection of French postcards entitled En l'an 2000. The illustrations may be quaint, but there are some surprisingly accurate predictions about the dizzy technological heights we would reach by the millennium. We may still be some way off flying fire fighters and post men, but the artist, Jean Marc Cote, was spot on with the 'cine-photo-telegraph' one of which we all have glued to our hands most of the time.

We couldn't write a newsletter about futuristic images without mentioning Stocktrek, a collection of digitally created scenes imagining far-off planets, aliens, space travel and other worlds. Click here to time travel through a few examples.

Finally, we round off this latest missive with a reminder of the numerous futuristic films we have available through our galaxy of film content providers. From Battlefield Earth to Bladerunner, take a look at some of the movies that take us, quite literally, Back to the Future.

We hope our newsletters fire your imagination and perhaps offer some inspiration for 'future' projects. Get in touch to find out how we can help. You can reach us by emailing [email protected] or calling 020 8318 0034.