Tag: Rocketeer

What Mad Universe: Reality as a Multiple Choice Question

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Reality as a Multiple Choice Question, read it over on Substack.

Okay Space Explorers, today I want you to put on your special quartz reflecting ray goggles and join me for a journey into infinity!  What Mad Universe (1948) is a delightful science fantasy story written by Fredric Brown. Keith Winton gets caught in a blast created by an experimental moon rocket crashing back to Earth. The electrical nature of the explosion shoves Winton through the walls of our universe and into another reality—where pulp science fiction stories are real! This is one of my favorite pulp stories. Well, why not? It’s…

Explorations: The Roots of H. B. Piper’s Dhergabar

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Read The Rocketeer over on Substack

I’m a huge fan of H. Beam Piper’s works, particularly his Paratime Police stories. The city of Dhergabar is often mentioned in the stories. It is the First Level city where Paratime Police have their headquarters on “Home” timeline. The name has always struck me as funny, linguistically. Today in The Rocketeer I explore what could possibly be the linguistic roots of the word, Dhergabar. Join me over on Substack to read, “Explorations: The Roots of H. B. Piper’s Dhergabar” — https://tinyurl.com/2p83auhy

The Rocketeer Returns

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The Rocketeer Returns on Substack

Well, space explorers I’ll bet you thought ‘ol Captain Light was lost to the solar tides of some other sun, didn’t you? Not so! I’m not saying that our space fleet didn’t have some outrageous circumstances and near misses…of course we did! But we’ve zoomed back to Earth at last. And now it’s 2023. Who’d ever thought we’d get here? Why it’s the future or I’m a devil of Jupiter! The Rocketeer newsletter is going to have a new format now, something much more high tech—online posts on Substack. Very…

Rocketeer Feature: Parallel Realities: An Easy Way To Fry Your Brain

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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: It’s A Zwilnik World: How E. E. Doc Smith’s Lensmen Series Imagined a Neotopian Universe

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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

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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…