Tom Swift Jr. in The Race to the Moon. Our bet's on the rocket though.
The future was a chrome-trimmed triangular window in the front of dad's car, and it had its own knob to open it up. The future was a hamburger under a light fixture that looked like an atom. The future was going to be awesome.
Cyborg 009 has shades of this, mainly in the Cyborgs' uniforms and their rayguns.
Astro Boy: Is the one of the first animes to use this aesthetic.
Comic Books
Zot, who lives in the far-flung future year of 1965. Note that Zot! began publication in 1984.
Several DC Comics characters who live in between the present era and the Crystal Spires and Togas era of the Legion Of Super-Heroes, including Tommy Tomorrow and the Planeteers, the Knights of the Galaxy, Ultra the Multi-Alien, Space Ranger, and Space Cabbie. Adam Strange does this in present time.
Adam Strange appeared in some Starman comics and fit in very well because the title already had a certain Raygun Gothic aesthetic.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen takes place in a parallel universe where all fiction is true, so the aesthetics of the world shift in every time period to match the aesthetics of that time period's pop culture. Appropriately, the first two volumes (which take place in the late Victorian era) have a pronounced Steampunk vibe, whereas the standalone graphic novel The Black Dossier (which shifts the action to the 1950s) changes this to Raygun Gothic.
Used in the Star Wars prequel trilogy: The Naboo space fleet and the architecture of Coruscant are modeled after this, while the Republic space fleet morphs over time into the blocky, Used Future Imperial fleet.
The Necromonger fleet from The Chronicles of Riddick is a much darker interpretation of this aesthetic.
Star Trek was always very much this way, although the new movie combines it with the aesthetics of an iPod. (That's not an insult; it still looks cool.)
Anton Furst's designs for Gotham City for the 1989 Batman film have some elements of this.
Like the source material, the Flash Gordon movie is full of this. Of note is that the Cool AirshipAjax is referred to by the delightfully old-timey title of "war rocket".
Just as Star TrekThe Original Series was one of the last unselfconscious uses of this trope, this film is one of the first entirely conscious uses of it. (Also note that the Zharkov's rocket, built on Earth, does NOT invoke this trope, at least in comparison to the ships of Mongo.)
Zathura takes place in more or less present day, but the magical board game of the same name is most definitely Raygun Gothic.
Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow is a funny corner case. It's set in an alternate-universe version of the 1930's, so it's often cited as an example of Diesel Punk, but the aesthetics and optimistic worldview are much closer to Raygun Gothic.
The villains in J Men Forever are all about this, especially the Lightning Bug baby!
Literature
The Trope Namer, William Gibson's "The Gernsback Continuum", is about a freelance photographer hired to take pictures of buildings inspired by this aesthetic, who either slowly finds himself being sucked into an alternate timeline where it was all Canon or is hallucinating the whole thing.
Gibson's story refers to Hugo Gernsback, the "Father of Science Fiction," who founded the first science fiction magazine, created science fiction fandom (by encouraging readers who wrote to him to interact with each other directly), wrote very early examples of the genre, such as Ralph 124C 41+, and coined the term "sciencefiction."
Actually, John W. Campbell coined the term "Science Fiction". Gernsbeck called it "Scientifiction", which may be even cooler.
E3 in Ian McDonald's Planesrunner is an Alternate History that combines aspects of this trope and Steam Punk. Zeppelins are the main form of air transport but their bags are woven of carbon nanofibers. The main motive power is coal powered (because there's no oil in this world) electric motors, which were invented before the steam engine. Their computers are of the vacuum tube and punch card variety. There's radio but no TV, but they use monofilament wire.
Live Action TV
Pick a Gerry Anderson TV show, any Gerry Anderson TV show. Thunderbirds, Stingray, Captain Scarlet, Fireball XL 5...
The alien message decoded in the final episode of Dark Skies had elements of this, presumably as a nostalgic in-joke, since the rest of the series's aesthetics and mythology were much more modern X-Files-inspired sci-fi.
On The Flash, 1950s villain the Ghost adheres to this motif, and is rather dismayed to find that 1990 isn't like this when he awakens from cryogenic sleep.
Music
Doctor Steel plays with this aesthetic in his music and interactive Fandom community.
The phrase was applied (probably before Stereolab) to the distinctive lounge musical stylings of Juan García Esquivel. note Not during Esquivel's heyday of the early Sixties, but in a 1994 compilation album called "Space Age Bachelor Pad Music".Have a listen.
"IGY," the first track on Donald Fagen's 1982 album The Nightfly, is pretty much this trope in a nutshell. He describes a world where there's a train running undersea from New York to Paris every 90 minutes, everyone gets their own Spandex jacket, weather is controlled and solar power is plentiful - and it's all run by computers programmed "with compassion and vision." The liner notes describe the album as "certain fantasies that might have been entertained by a young man growing up [...] during the late fifties and early sixties, i.e., one of my general height, weight and build."
The title is a reference to the International Geophysical Year, a scientific event in 1957-8 that was the USSR's excuse to launch Sputnik into space, thus kicking off the "rocket age" for real.
GURPS Alternate Earths explored the alternate history of Gernsback, which was 1930's science fiction stories come to life.
GURPS Tales of the Solar Patrol is a more fleshed out version of the concept, set in a universe consciously modeled after Flash Gordon and 50's era Young Adult science fiction stories.
Many, manySons of Ether made use of this aesthetic, their greatest triumph being their alternate dimensional laboratory city - and perfect example of this trope - the Gernsback Continuum. Occasionally an eccentric Technocrat, usually a Void Engineer, would do something similar, particularly if they'd been around for a while.
Spaceship Zero featured a retro-Space Opera setting where, for instance, there was no miniaturization, and bigger computers were always better. Partially deconstructed as well, as there were definite indications that underneath all that chrome was a decent amount of grit, causing one reviewer to refer to it as "pulp—with bathrooms."
Realms of Mars from Exile Game Studio promises to be this for sword and planet, much as Hollow Earth Expedition harkened back to adventure pulps.
Rocketmen utilizes this as part of its theme, from its space ships, lasers guns, and the whole solar system being colonized.
Video Games
The Fallout series is set in a post apocalyptic Raygun Gothic world.
The Covenant in Halo are modeled after a version of this, as everything they design has a very sleek design. As do most things on the titular halo rings, which are designed by the Forerunner. Understandable, as the Covenant just copied everything they have from the Forerunner.
Rapture in BioShock has strong elements of this in its design.
The Zombie missions in Call of Duty: World At War qualify.
In Star Control II, the Syreen had this aesthetic — their ships were old-fashioned rockets, and what you saw of the Syreen themselves and their ship controls would look right at home illustrating some 1920s sci-fi pulp about Amazon princesses in space or what-have-you. Appropriate, as the Syreen were a species of good old-fashioned Blue Skinned Space Babes in a game otherwise populated by Starfish Aliens and Eldritch Abominations; their pulpy style helped lampshade this fact.
The Soldier of Team Fortress 2 has several retro rayguns modeled after Weta's "Dr. Grordbort's" line.
As have the Engineer and Pyro now, and the medic and scout are next in line.
Space Channel 5 uses more of a 60's and 70's take on this design.
One of the characters in Andrew Kepple's Goodbye Cruel World! accidentally turns the entire world into this by activating a non-Y2K-compliant VCR and triggering the bug.
Zap! has a lot of aspects of this, especially in the spaceship design.
Let's not forget Buck Godot - Zap Gun For Hire, which has a lovely Zeerust feel to it, and was published "late in the 20th century".
Dresden Codak is in love with this trope, married it, and now has a house in the suburbs with two kids and a dog with it.
The hero of SyFy's online Diesel Punk series The Mercury Men, Jack Yaeger, is dressed as a typical Raygun Gothic pilot: Bomber jacket, flight cap and goggles, jodpurs and jackboots and carrying a raygun.
Parodied in Futurama, where a novelty bar is decorated in this style, and the patrons enjoy it in an ironic sort of way. "Everything's so retro!"
Of course, a lot of the look of Futurama as a whole is partly inspired by Raygun Gothic itself, particulary some of the buildings, the technology and the lot of the Planet Express Ship.
The Incredibles takes place in an alternate-universe version of The Seventies, and features a strong mid-sixties take on how wonderful the future nearly was.
Atomic Betty's art style is largely an homage to sci-fi Hanna-Barbera cartoons of the sixties. See here◊ for an example.
The Tomorrowland sections of Disney parks were redesigned in 1998 to look like this, Disney having (perhaps wisely) given up on trying to keep up with present-day visions of the future.
Atomic Rockets is a website that starts with this trope, but uses it as a launchpad to explore very hard science-fiction ideas about space flight. It refers to "raygun gothic" as "rocketpunk", to follow "steampunk" and "dieselpunk".
Much artwork associated with the various World's Fairs. For example, this map cover which manages to make a bus look absolutely glorious.
And something that maybe helped to create this trope: Just compare the R-7 Rocket◊ that put the Sputnik in orbit, to the Saturn Rockets◊ of the Apollo Program.
