The retrofuture or Space Age aesthetic that William Gibson termed "raygun Gothic" was largely born in the Streamline Moderne architecture and design movement of the 1930s, and received a booster injection from the actual Space Age of the 50s-60s.

Streamline Moderne is part of/a reaction to Art Deco. Where traditional Art Deco reacts to earlier organic curvatures with sharp edges, Streamline Moderne simplifies (...streamlines) it into smooth curves. The idea of aerodynamic shapes, shiny chrome, wide swathes of bright color, evoked fanciful technologies like zeppelins but also in consumer goods. Sewing machines, vacuum cleaners, on up to cars and trains were produced in this new design and heavily marketed to the (especially) American middle class. Crucially, developments in material science during/following World War I lead to the mass use of aluminum in these new products. Technological progress, shiny and chrome, prosperity even in the 1930s.

Streamline Moderne coincides with the true popularization and, I think, legitimization of science fiction as a genre. While the late 19th century gave Americans their "inventor stories" and western Europe "future wars," and Verne and Wells captured imaginations, by the 1930s it was pulp magazines that really brought a science fictional concept of the future into the hands of readers. (Amazing Stories' first issue was 1926, but the pre-pulp years are typically seen as...not great). Astounding Science Fiction and Amazing Stories covers feature a lot of tentacles and damsels in distress, of course, but also shiny chrome, streamlined spaceships. Early sci-fi movies, too, brought the streamline and chrome look. The future became sleek and shiny, because people expected the future to be sleek and shiny--later designers and artists aped the former.

The next indelible stamp, especially the white, came with the Space Race of the 50s and 60s. Future technology was now, and future technology meant rockets. Rockets were sometimes left silver, reflecting the metal they were made of; more often they were painted stark white with black markings, so launch controllers could more easily check for proper guidance--rockets spin on launch. ([If you're keeping score at home:] (http://i.imgur.com/WhoPdyo.png) Redstone was black and white, Atlas was silver, Titan was silver with some black and white, the Saturns were black and white. The first shuttle missions actually had a white external tank, too, until NASA realized how much weight it could save by ditching the paint!). And more directly, the clean room of assembly was [where the future happened on Earth.] (http://i.imgur.com/615pIta.png) These are white, workers wear all white, so dirt can more easily be seen, and they are speckled with silver of unpainted metal. And of course in terms of shaping public expectation, black and white photography only aided the notion.

By the late 70s and 80s, the idea of the future as shiny white was so firmly stamped on public imagination that moviemakers could use it to make rhetorical statements with their aesthetics. So Star Wars mobilizes the "used future" look to stress how the good guys with crumbling, broken, matte-colored ships fight the spick-and-span, shiny evil Empire. (ANH Luke and Leia wear white; stormtroopers are shiny white. ROTJ Luke is in black; Vader's helmet is shiny). Blade Runner, which proved hugely influential in aesthetic terms, gives us a little bit of chrome and a whole lot of black and dirt to signal a future gone wrong.

But that only helps cement the idea of the good future as white and shiny and smooth, which is still visible today in the most heavy-handed of rhetorical arenas: TV commercials. The clean room where progress happens, the technology that results--it's white and metal. Shiny.