As a kid I loved Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. What an incredible TV series! TWIKI, Buck, Wilma, Doctor Theopolis and some incredible dance moves (that NBC appears to have taken down from YouTube) grabbed my attention and promised an amazing future for a resilient human race. In my 20s I discovered Philip Francis… READ THE REST
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I love Armageddon 2419AD. You come in expecting pulp and ray guns and damsels in distress, and to be honest there are ray guns, but they are not just futuristic stand-ins for six shooters. This is serious work of Mil-SF that contains discussions of the relative pros and cons of line-of-sight beam weapons vs. guided rockets, or the tactics of using an anti-gravity ship’s drive against itself. As for damsels in distress, it was surprising to find that in Nolan’s future America men and women are women are fighters, not trophies to be won. Sadly the work exhibit large doses of racist anti-chinese sentiment, although to his merit Nolan attempted a retcon at the end of the sequel Novella that partially redeems the work.
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Thanks for the links to the kindle editions. I’m always on the lookout for classic scifi that I haven’t read yet.
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Both books are also available from Gutenberg.org. (More options. Yea!)
Armageddon 2419 A.D
The Airlords of Han
When did Gutenberg.org start supporting dropbox and google drive?
They’re at librivox too.
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As a hot blooded teenager watching the TV show, I could never work out why Buck was attracted to Wilma Deering instead of Princess Ardala.
Buck was too mature for that. Ardala was a spoiled brat who made selfish decisions that could hurt her people. Wilma worked for the good of the human race.
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You beat me to it! But for anyone interested, here’s the link to the Librivox recording: http://librivox.org/armageddon-2419-a-d-solo-by-philip-francis-nowlan/
My first exposure to Buck Rogers was the Buster Crabbe serial. The baddy was Killer Kane, a gangster rather than a yellow menace.
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Well damn, they did take down the Groove Armada spoof video after all. Guess everybody will just have to live with the funky stylings of Andromeda.
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Well damn, they did take down the Groove Armada spoof video after all. Guess everybody will just have to live with the funky stylings of Andromeda1.
That is so good. Its a shame the spoof and the orig are gone. Buck’s formal dancing is so smoooth.
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Killer Kane was a heavy from the start of the Buck Rogers comic strip. That started with the world being overrun by “Mongols.” Though they ended up making peace with the Mongols, a wartime sequence had the gang fighting descendants of Japanese who had migrated to a moon of Jupiter and devolved back into apes.
(And Killer Kane’s real first name was “Coe” and he had a relative named “Nova,” IIRC)
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Good points, well made; however, I did say I was a lot blooded teen at the time. In my defence, my favourite Charlie’s Angel was Sabrina; brains and a lovely croaky voice.
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