SciFi history?

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by starrigger

In the Tom Corbett Space Cadet series, the cadets studied from book tapes. In fact, one plot line starts with trouble over there being only one set of tapes on a subject, and they don't share nicely the way their mothers taught them. The creators envisioned electronic reading, but not the ease of copying. I'm not sure anyone foresaw that.

I believe all but one are now in the public domain and available as ebooks. See http://manybooks.net/series/16.html
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Dennis

[Joebill]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

oh I have to disagree! Heinlein had home computers!

Not in his early stuff. Of course, one of his later books, the house was a computer.

[Joebill]

Tom Corbett ? Space Cadet Happy ?

oh dear. I remember the television show. They didn't have air-tight hatches in the ships, they came out from behind the curtain. urrrrkrkr. The dialog for the telly show was atrocious as well.

There is also Clutch Cargo ! Where there was almost no movement in the cartoons, except for the voice actor's lips which were superimposed over the drawings of the characters. Basically, a slide show with voices.

There was another one, don't remember the title, where the Martians were huge swamp/mop looking beings, who could cloud people's minds with illusions. Sort of like a talking giant kelp.

When I was a kid Tom Swift Jr was in a number of books. Tom Swift jr and his space ship, his betatron, his space station, etc.

[Joebill]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

In later books. In earlier ones, his characters used mechanical devices, like circular slide rules. Andy Libby's interest as an early character was his ability to do math in his head that everyone else had to use a calculator or a slide rule for.

He did have things like ebook viewers, which implied that sort of capability, but he simply presented them as existing and didn't go into how they worked.

For that matter, Asimov's Foundation series has a character using what we would consider voice recognition software to write an essay for a class, but again, he just presents it as something they can do, and doesn't try to explain how it works.

Heinlein told a story about unrolling a sheet of butcher paper on his kitchen table, and he and his wife Virginia then independently worked a problem in orbital ballistics to check that a spacecraft could get from point X to point Y in time Z as required by a story. (He wanted Virginia to cross-check him because he thought her math was better than his.) He told this story to a visitng West Point cadet who said "But sir, why didn't you just use a computer?", and was properly abashed when Heinlein replied "My dear boy, this was in 1947!"
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Dennis

For the book 'Destination Moon'. And the cadet didn't get it right away.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Joebill

Tom Corbett ? Space Cadet Happy ?

If memory doesn't fail me, Cadet Happy was from "Buzz Corey in the 30th Century". In the Corbett books, at least, the main characters were Tom as captain, Astro as Engineer, and Roger (replaced midway through by TJ) as Astrogator.

oh dear. I remember the television show. They didn't have air-tight hatches in the ships, they came out from behind the curtain. urrrrkrkr. The dialog for the telly show was atrocious as well.

We are talking shoe string budgets, and FX we take for granted didn't exist. It wasn't uncommon to see a shot of a rocket supposedly flying through space, where you could see the wire suspending it.

There is also Clutch Cargo ! Where there was almost no movement in the cartoons, except for the voice actor's lips which were superimposed over the drawings of the characters. Basically, a slide show with voices.

Welcome to SyncroVox (the technique that was used to produce the lips superimposed on cartoon faces.) It got applied because it was cheap.

When I was a kid Tom Swift Jr was in a number of books. Tom Swift jr and his space ship, his betatron, his space station, etc.

Yep. A couple have hit public domain:

Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19258

Tom Swift and the Visitor From Planet X
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22333
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Dennis

[Joebill]

I have a dvd somewhere with a collection of 'first episodes' and Cadet happy was in the tv series Tom Corbett. Maybe they borrowed the character ?

As for cheap tv shows. In the early 1960s, there was a Pirate kids show out of Baltimore, Maryland. he showed, of course, Popeye cartoons. There were 'surprise attacks' by the likes of Captain Kidd and Captain Morgan. Stock footage excerted from old pirate/bucaneer movides of the 1950s of battles at sea between pirate and Royal Navy sailing ships..

[Joebill]

I looked up 'Buzz Corey in the 30th Century' and you are correct. I had misremembered.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Joebill

As for cheap tv shows. In the early 1960s, there was a Pirate kids show out of Baltimore, Maryland. he showed, of course, Popeye cartoons. There were 'surprise attacks' by the likes of Captain Kidd and Captain Morgan. Stock footage excerted from old pirate/bucaneer movides of the 1950s of battles at sea between pirate and Royal Navy sailing ships..

I grew up in Philadelphia, and we had a couple.

One was "Popeye Theater", hosted by Sally Starr, who called herself Cowgirl Sal. dressed in cowgirl regalia, and was shown cantering on a Palomino in the opening and closing credits. She showed Popeye cartoons, but also came up with weird Warner Brothers stuff done in the 40's as WWII propaganda. Some of it was surreal.

The story I heard was that she had started as a stripper working the burlesque circuit before becoming a kid's TV show hostess, and there were rumors of a "blue" film featuring her and a then young screen hopeful named Arthur Godfrey.

Another was Satellite Police, hosted by a character who called himself the Flying Saucerer. This came on Saturday and Sunday mornings, and showed things like old Republic serials. It introduced me to Flash Gordon, Rocky Jones - Space Ranger, Buzz Corey in the 30th Century, and Commando Cody (inspiration for The Rocketman). The Flying Saucerer would break into the films to do something silly or make snotty comments before resuming the action. I understood where the MST3K creators got part of their inspiration.
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Dennis

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I believe all but one are now in the public domain and available as ebooks. See http://manybooks.net/series/16.html
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Dennis

Better versions of the Tom Corbett books can be found right here in the MR library!

BTW, it wasn't until the last of the eight books that TJ replaced Roger Manning in the Polaris unit. (That book, the only one not in p.d., was the weakest of the lot, I always thought.)

I have no memory of the TV show, though my parents told me I watched it as a very young boy. But I loved the books, and read them over and over. I still like to go back to them once in a while. My favorites were On the Trail of the Space Pirates, and The Revolt on Venus.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

My earliest SF TV recollections were the Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials (Both with Buster Crabbe, and I could never tell them apart back then!).

In another thread, I mentioned how hard I laughed when they were going to kill Flash with a laser: They trained it on a rock first, and we watched it melt like ice cream. Then they trained this searchlight-sized beam on Flash's chest, and we watch him grimace and writhe in agony for 5-10 seconds before the episode cliffhangers!

At the other end, someone breaks in and switches off the beam, and releases a breathless but otherwise okay Flash from the wall. Great stuff! I love to think about the tech we present today that will look like that to readers/viewers 50 years from now...

[Joebill]

I found out around 10-20 years ago that the center part of the US had the radio serials longer than the coasts did.

So, Saturday night I heard Little Orphan Annie, and a few times i got to stay up late and hear Inner Sanctum.

Sunday afternoon Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Green Hornet, and The Lone Ranger radio shows were on.

Then they stopped and Roy, Lone Ranger, and Green Hornet became tv shows.

[kindlekitten]

Originally Posted by Joebill

Not in his early stuff. Of course, one of his later books, the house was a computer.

*shrug* I was just pointing out one of the Masters that incorporated home computers!

[Joebill]

Not a problem, I was tired and probably only thinking of his early works.

[emellaich]

I've been reading a few free fiction (not science fiction) books from Amazon lately. The ones where the author has a six book series and gives the first one away as a promotion. Anyway, it's been jarring to see these 'modern' books that have no concept of a cell phone. Our character would get stuck in a broken down car and have to hike back for help, or would go searching for a pay phone to check in, etcetera.

Another jarring note recently occurred when re-reading a favorite Zelazny. The main character, a judo/fitness buff would light up a cigarette every few pages as he thought about something or another. Cigarette smoking is something I've run across several times in my 'older' books. It's just a bit jarring because it never (?) shows up in current books.

Finally, on the subject of SF, SciFi, Science Fiction (Hard, soft and space opera), and, dare I say it: Fantasy. I do recognize most of these distinctions, and if you and I sat down and discussed it we could probably even agree to common definitions. I'd even let you convince me of your definition. Now try to fit a list of books into those defined categories. The problem that I found is that even with a common definition people will disagree which category a particular book fits into. In many cases, the book will fit into multiple categories. For example, some people I know would put the Honor Harrington series into fantasy because she is an empath.

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by emellaich

For example, some people I know would put the Honor Harrington series into fantasy because she is an empath.

I would'nt

Honor Harrington is not an empath, her Treecat Nimitz is and she shares through her bond with him, that ability.

Well, that is at least how I recall the character. Been a while since I read an honor Harrington book.