Web Link Alan Brown's (Buck to the Future: The Many Incarnations of Buck Rogers)

  In his post on Tor.com 
Buck to the Future: The Many Incarnations of Buck Rogers, Alan Brown offered not just a discussion of various manifestations of  Buck Rogers in print and film but also a wonderful discussion of his father's experiences growing up in New York City. The city these experiences evoked, conjured up for me, the future city as depicted in the pulp magazine covers of the 1930's and the editors and artist who brought them to life. I love these depictions of the future, resplendent with jet packs (still waiting for mine) , flying cars and wondrous towers, so I went to the shelves to see what I could find.  So here's to Buck Rogers, the city of the future and the Browns, father and son.

"My dad was born in 1922, and grew up in the suburbs of New York City, a metropolis with one foot in the future. His father worked at Bell Labs, and he remembered being taken to work to see new inventions like the first televisions. His father also, in the wee hours of one morning in 1927, took him to Roosevelt Field so he could watch Charles Lindbergh take off on the first non-stop solo flight from New York to Paris. He watched the construction of the world’s highest skyscraper, the Chrysler Building, followed shortly by a new highest skyscraper, the Empire State Building. The city was criss-crossed by an ever-expanding network of mass transit, with new aircraft flying to the growing airports, and all manner of new ships plying the waters." from



https://www.tor.com/2019/02/28/buck-to-the-future-the-many-incarnations-of-buck-rogers/

 Covers

1. Editor T. O'Conor Sloane, Ph.D. Cover by Leo Morey

2. Editor T. O'Conor Sloane, Ph.D. Cover by Leo Morey

3. Editor Hugo Gernsback Cover by Frank R. Paul

4. Editor Hugo Gernsback Cover by Frank R. Paul

5. Editor Hugo Gernsback Cover by Frank R. Paul

Anthony Burgess: ‘Metropolis changed my childhood’ (Guardian Link)

In earlier posts I have discussed my love for the pulp covers of Frank R. Paul with their huge machines and sky scraping cities. I wonder how much images from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis has influenced science fiction illustration and indeed our visions of the future in general. I thought this link might be of interest.

 Anthony Burgess: ‘Metropolis changed my childhood’

A previously unpublished 1980s essay by the novelist and critic Anthony Burgess launches this year’s search for new critical writing



https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/jun/03/observer-anthony-burgess-prize-fritz-lang-metropolis-childhood

Cover credits

Pringle encyclopedia, detail from Metropolis.

A Clockwork Orange, Barbican edition.

http://blog.barbican.org.uk/2017/05/penguin-classics-on-a-clockwork-orange/

MICHAEL MOORCOCK: WHY FAHRENHEIT 451 ENDURES

This article (link below) by Moorcock from Literary Hub puts Bradbury and his works wonderfully in context, not only looking at his influences, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Leigh Brackett, among others but also mentioning the works of his contemporaries like Frederik Pohl, C.M. Kornbluth and Philip K. Dick. I love this type of overview and it also acts as an excuse to look over my own shelves. This one was right in my wheel house. 

The Truth of Ray Bradbury’s
Prophetic Vision

MICHAEL MOORCOCK: WHY FAHRENHEIT 451 ENDURES

"For all his nostalgia, Bradbury was perfectly positioned to experience what to most of us was still the future. In the 1940s and 50s Southern California boomed. People from all over the USA were attracted there by jobs in agriculture, engineering and the non-print media. Hollywood dream factories expanded to include television. Fantasy and reality found a perfect blend. Bradbury’s visual imagination, his lyrical style and experience of a changing world were ideally suited to suggest what the future might hold for us."

https://lithub.com/the-truth-of-ray-bradburys-prophetic-vision/

"Bradbury might be the first author to offer “market forces” as the base of a dystopia. In that sense he could be said to share ties with those East Coast writers who provided Galaxy with some of its best work. Marxist critics would have no difficulty in analyzing the book as a description of a certain kind of doctrinaire capitalism, where the middle class is reduced to nothing more than so many consumer units, where entertainment has become a never-ending reality show and literacy is not only marginalized but actively discouraged. On rereading this wonderfully spare moral tale others have also been struck by its parallels in present-day society."

Cover credits

Pleasure to Burn cover by Joseph Mugnaini

Amazing Stories, Tarzan and the Ant Men, At The Earth's Core covers by J. Allen St. John

The Book of Skaith cover by Don Maitz

Startling Stories cover by Alex Schomburg

Planet Stories cover by Allen Anderson

A survey of Time Travel in Science Fiction / Reading, Collecting and Writing Science Fiction

My wife sent me two links I want to share. The first a review of Time Travel: A History by James Gleick, by John Lancaster in the New York Review of Books. The glimpses Lancaster offers of Wells, Gernsback, Heinlein, the fourth Dimension and the Grandfather Paradox in his review lead me to expect great things of the actual book, which I have added to my Christmas list.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/11/24/can-we-escape-from-time-james-gleick/

The second an article called Universe Collecting: the art of reading and buying science fiction by Joshua Sky from Omni Nov. 7, 2016. I found this article very engaging, Joshua obviously shares both my enjoyment of the SF short story

" Lately, I’ve tried to cut down the amount of time I spend on the internet, reading instead. It's been rewarding. My writing and critical thinking have improved, and I find the activity meditative.  I try to read at least one short story every night before bed.  I believe short fiction is having a comeback, because of the brevity of the format, coupled with the depth and quality obtainable within just a few pages. "

and the book as physical object

" I tried to do the E-Reader thing, and I enjoy the conveniences of reading on a Kindle and iPad, but it's just not the same. I see books as individual pieces of artwork. The layout, the cover art, the joy of physically holding the text when the pages have you enthralled in its story, all have its own individual and irreplaceable value. Also, it's far easier to flip and find random passages, or chapters than trying to swipe left-or-right on a screen. Further, as my life stands, I'm tired of staring at screens, the written page is a delightful respite. "

https://omni.media/universe-collecting

Hopefully you will enjoy these links as much as I did.