Well Space Explorers it’s Wednesday and that means that it’s time for the your weekly missive from Captain Light over on Venus Base. Read The Rocketeer on Substack. Today’s post is called, “The Original Science Fiction.”
The Original Science Fiction
Tag: Feature articles
Super-Science Kids: First Fandom Experience, part 2
Enter First Fandom Experience At PulpFest 2019, I discovered an extraordinary project called, First Fandom Experience. Father and son, David and Daniel Ritter, are dedicated pulp fans and collectors with a special interest in the early days of science fiction fandom. They, along with core team members—John L. Coker III, Sam McDonald, Doug Ellis and Kate Baxter—have created a database of materials which they make available through their website, books, and on social media. Part 1 of this interview, published on the PulpFest blog in September, was a general introduction…
The Cosmos Contest – I won the Grand Prize!!
I WON!! This is big…VERY BIG!! I just won the 2020 Cosmos Prize for my pulp story, “Battle at Neptune.” This is a big win for me as it was judged as a pulp science fiction story by people who really know what they’re reading. From the judges: Grand Prize: Battle at Neptune, by Sara Light-Waller In which a desperate last stand buys time for a united Solar System to invent a new and devastating dimensional weapon to defeat the invader Ay-Artz. Includes original illustrations! We chose the winning entries…
PulpFest Profile — Eighty Years of CAPTAIN FUTURE
Oh, for a handsome man in a space suit! *heavy sigh* Curtis Newton, Captain Future, was space opera hero of the 21st Century. Born in 1990, he was the solar system’s greatest defender. Curt was a genius inventor with flaming red hair, a ready laugh and a keen eye for justice. Superman’s Fortress of Solitude was inspired by Future’s secluded base on the Moon. And the Bat-Signal by his North Pole flare. His unhuman sidekicks included a robot, an android, and a disembodied brain. Yes, it all sounds very corny…
Rocketeer Feature: Parallel Realities: An Easy Way To Fry Your Brain
Timeline Jumping and the Mandela Effect Disclaimer: you’re in no way obligated to believe anything in this post unless, of course, you want to. Then, by all means. I’m going to be perfectly honest with you, Time is never as obedient as you think it should be. It’s curvy and brain-buckling, changing speeds unexpectedly and never with the right amount of warning. Time shrinks or expands to fill a space depending upon your mood and the level of engagement you have with what’s going on. That’s why a favorite TV…
Rocketeer Feature: Letters from Venus
My dear Space Explorers, I am writing to you from far across the system, out in the Keiper belt to be exact. I know this missive will take a long time to reach you, I’m not sure how long exactly, but certainly months. I was called away soon after I returned from PulpFest, last Summer. It’s a story that you probably won’t believe but I’m going to tell you anyway. You must have heard of Captain Future, the Wizard of Science. No? Well, he has been gone for a very…
ROCKETEER FEATURE: It’s A Zwilnik World: How E. E. Doc Smith’s Lensmen Series Imagined a Neotopian Universe
By Sara Light-Waller Fans of classic science fiction are undoubtedly familiar with E. E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensmen series (published from approximately 1937-1954). The books are ultimate space operas where massive fleets harness the power of suns as directed energy weapons and full-size planets as projectiles. The heroes are hard-hitting space warriors, spies, and telepaths in the service of Civilization. That’s some heady stuff right there! But reviewing the Lensmen as works of literature or even as an adventure series is not my purpose today. Instead, I’m going to talk about…
ROCKETEER FEATURE: Fontastic Lettering Changes from 1920 to Today
by Sara Light-Waller A ROCKETEER reader suggested the topic for this month’s From the Drafting Table column — changes in book and magazine font styles during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Of course, this is a huge topic and I will cover only a small section of it, the common fonts used in the body text of books and magazines. You might wonder why anyone should care. Words are words, right? Unfortunately not. Our minds register something strange when an odd font is used. It may be that the…
ROCKETEER FEATURE: VENUS IN THE PULPS
By Sara Light-Waller “Day again — one hundred and seventy dragging hours of throttling, humid heat. An interminable period of monotony lived in eternal mists, swirling with sluggish dankness, enervating, miasmatic, pulsant with the secret whisperings of mephitic life-forms. That accounted for the dull existence of a Venusian trader, safe in the protection of his stilt-legged trading post twenty feet above the spongy earth — but bored to the point of madness.” — The Hothouse Planet by A.K. Barnes. Although scientists today take a very different view, in the pulp…
ROCKETEER FEATURE: A DISTINCTLY ALIEN SKY
by Sara Light-Waller Perhaps the strangest vision of the planet Venus comes from the Thunderbolts Project, a joint study of Comparative Mythology, Cosmology, and Plasma Physics by David Talbott and Wallace Thornhill. This revolutionary synthesis of ancient testimony, high-energy plasma experiments, and space age discoveries suggests that ancient myths and legends have their true origins in extremely violent electrical discharge formations in the heavens. According to the researchers, the skies above Earth were once immensely different from how they appear today. Planets Saturn, Venus, and Mars were much closer to…