At the 2012 Baltimore Comic-Con, Basement Comics began offering for the first time a new-to-market, original owner 1920s-1950s science fiction pulp collection.
“This collection is literally farm – or should I say, barn-stored fresh,” said Basement Comics’ Al Stoltz.
“We recently purchased over five hundred pulps with lots of bed sheet size and regular pulp size great reads. Fantastic early sci fi and rocket covers and some of the best writers ever presenting in some cases their first published work like Ray Bradbury, L Ron Hubbard, Alfred Bester and more,” he said.
One pulp even features a letter to the editor from a then-17-year-old Jerry Siegel, co-creator of Superman, Stoltz said. “This is really a piece of comic history!”
Also included in the offerings are the second appearance of Buck Rogers and even some John Carter covers and stories.
“We are pricing and getting ready as many as we can for the show and we hope pulp collectors will be pleased with the selection,” he said.
Astronaut Neil Armstrong’s death last week at 82 brings to mind… well, an awful lot of stuff. If I were to put it all in one folder, I would name that folder “Passion and Wonder.”
Passion is the binding force of our lives. Wonder is what keeps us moving forward, what propels us into the future. Passion and wonder combine to create the most vital force in nature.
Passion plus wonder is a formula. Passion plus wonder equals H.G. Wells. Passion plus wonder equals Alice Guy-Blaché. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Nicola Tesla. Bessie Coleman. George Washington Carver. Ray Bradbury. Jack Kirby. Terry Gilliam. Michael Jordan. Sinead O’Conner. Alan Moore. Passion plus wonder equals Harlan Ellison. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Passion plus wonder equals Neil Armstrong.
If not for passion and wonder, our 21st Century would look exactly like Galileo’s father’s 16th Century. Most of us would be living in small villages, never venturing more than 25 miles from the place of our birth. Not that it would be boring; avoiding boredom requires a sense of wonder.
Our culture tends to encourage and, upon occasion, even honor creativity. We are very lucky – previous generations received less support… if any. If you have the passion and the sense of wonder to go out there and create, you have the obligation to do so – both to yourself and to society.
Pursue your passion and create.
It does not take courage. Courage is a retroactive designation for the act of putting one foot in front of the other and finishing something. It’s not up to you to determine its ultimate value. Your job is to pursue your passion, employing your sense of wonder. Posterity is in the eye of the next generation.
Neil Armstrong already stepped on the Moon. You must step into the future.
First, check out John Ostrander’s column, found somewhere near the stuff you’re reading, and then imagine me shouting Amen into the Grand Canyon and listen to the seemingly endless echoes and finally consider this a small gloss on John’s work.
John cites the old how-to-write chestnut: Write what you know. Okay, first a slightly snarky hypothesis that’s not intended to insult, or even question, my pedagogical colleagues, just raise the tiniest bump in the dialogue: Maybe those who teach the aforementioned chestnut write what they know because that’s all they, themselves, can write. That’s not a knock: we’re all wired a bit differently and who’s to say that a talent for writing, if talent it be, doesn’t manifest in as many different ways as, say, a talent for music? No good or bad, just different. (Who’s your fave, Mozart or Bob Dylan? Oh – lucky you! – can you dig ‘em both?)
It seemed to me, back when I was giving this kind of matter some thought, that until recently there’s been a cultural bias against imaginative storytelling. “Realistic” (note punctuation) equals good: fantastic equals bad. So Hemingway is a good writer because he wrote about going down to the café in the afternoon to drink the good wine, and Bradbury is bad because he wrote about… Martians and stuff.
Second, a confession that, with any luck at all, will segue into an observation: Despite my having written 200 or so Batman stories, I have never waited on a shadowy rooftop for a heavily armed psychopath to arrive so I can give him such! a smack. I’ve never bent steel in my bare hands or changed the course of mighty rivers either, but I’ve written Superman stories. The Batman stories were easier and more fun.
Here we circle back to the chestnut. I think the reason I was more comfortable with Batman than with the undoubtedly estimable Superman has to do with writing… not what I know, but what I fantasize. Batman lives near my dreams: Superman, not so much. I’ve never daydreamed about having godlike powers – and let’s face it, Superman is a demigod, at least – but I could imagine, oh…running a marathon in 2:10? Punching out that bosun’s mate who clocked me solid at that bus stop in Cuba? We’re talking about feats that are difficult and even extraordinary – he was one tough bosun’s mate – but that are within human capabilities. Did you watch the Olympics this year?
Let’s revisit the chestnut one last time…No – let’s toss it out altogether and substitute a few words from Henry David Thoreau: Go confidently in the direction of your dreams.
Maybe Hemingway dreamed of those cafés. And Bradbury? All those wonderful Martians…
It’s just another average day of internet browsing. You’re doing your thing, checking the news, maybe taking a detour to your favorite webcomic. Then, WHAM (or rather, the internet version of said sound effect).
ERROR 451.
What happened? Did the servers overload? Did the connection crash? Is the address wrong?
No; this page has been burned.
Error 451 is a new HTTP Error status code proposed by Google developer advocate Tim Bray. The code would pop up the same way an Error 404 code does — except instead of being told a page could not be found, a viewer would be informed that the site is being censored.
The number is an homage to Ray Bradbury‘s Fahrenheit 451, which takes place in a dystopian future in which firemen burn books because the government has declared reading illegal.
According to Wired’s WebMonkey blog, the biggest advantage of the 451 code is that it would explain why content is unavailable — such as which legal authority is imposing the restriction. This would let visitors know that the government, not the Internet Service Provider, is the reason for the page’s malfunction. Currently, 403 errors are most often used when blocking access to censored pages.
Error code 451 would pop up in situations such as the Indian government’s censorship of the site Cartoonists Against Corruption, which was blocked because its critique of the government was deemed “defamatory and derogatory.”
The biggest problem with the code, Bray admits, is that many governments are not fond of the idea of transparent censorship. So, if we’re lucky — or not? — this code may be popping up in our browsers in the future.
Please help support CBLDF’s important First Amendment work and reporting on issues such as this by making a donation or becoming a member of the CBLDF!
Becca Hoekstra is studying journalism in San Francisco, California.
All Pulp has been informed of a petition to commemorate the life of noted author, Ray Bradbury (who passed away on June 5, 2012) on a stamp from the United States Postal Service.
In a career spanning more than seventy years, Ray Bradbury has inspired generations of readers to dream, think, and create.
A prolific author of hundreds of short stories and close to fifty books, as well as numerous poems, essays, operas, plays, teleplays, and screenplays, Bradbury was one of the most celebrated writers of our time.
His groundbreaking works include Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. He wrote the screen play for John Huston’s classic film adaptation of Moby Dick, and was nominated for an Academy Award.
He adapted sixty-five of his stories for television’s The Ray Bradbury Theater, and won an Emmy for his teleplay of The Halloween Tree.
In honor of the passing this week of the great Ray Bradbury, here’s a half-hour television documentary about him by David L. Wolper, courtesy of the Internet Archive.
Included is Bradbury’s “Dial Double Zero,” a short story about intelligence within a telephone system.
Enjoy. Me, I’m going to go memorize a book in his honor.
Ray Bradbury, generally considered to be among America’s greatest writers, died Tuesday night in Los Angeles. He was 91.
The author of such modern classics as Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, Something Wicked This Way Comes and Dandelion Wine, Ray Bradbury was born August 22, 1920, in Waukegan, Illinois, on Lake Michigan near the Wisconsin border. From these placid roots came a gargantuan imagination that gifted the world with nearly 30 novels and collections of his 600-plus short stories, helping the fantasy and science fiction genre shake the coils of its adolescent, bug-eyed monsters and big-breasted blondes image.
Heavily influenced as a child by futuristic imagery of Buck Rogers, Bradbury maintained his enthusiasm for the comics medium. When EC Comics William M. Gaines publisher “inadvertently borrowed” one of his stories for adaptation, Ray sent him a polite note informing Gaines that his payment check must have been lost in the mail. An enduring relationship quickly followed, and Bradbury’s work was adapted by such great artists as Wallace Wood and Al Williamson.
On a personal note, I had met Ray several times – the first at the premiere of his first play, The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit, directed by Stuart Gordon (later made into a movie by Gordon starring Edward James Olmos, Joe Mantegna, Esai Morales, Gregory Sierra and Michael Saad). One of those great moments in life came when I was asked to share an autograph table with Ray at the San Diego Comic Con; we spent some time talking about his fellow Waukeganite, Jack Benny. He was a marvelous, charming man – a surprisingly opinionated man who, despite his reputation as a science fiction author (which he denied; he was a fantasist), Ray Bradbury declined to fly in airplanes.
He helped inspire the imaginations of several generations. I can think of no greater tribute.
All Pulp is saddened to announce that legendary author Ray Bradbury, creator of such classics as Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles, passed today at the age of 91. Regardless of your interest in New Pulp, what genre You love the most, it is undeniable that Bradbury’s work as well as the man himself had an incredible effect on how writers of all sorts carry out their art today. Our thoughts and wishes go out to the Bradbury family and scores and scores of fans.
Thanks for all the wonderful stories, Mr. Bradbury.
Over the weekend I started to read Stephen King’s new book, 11/22/63: A Novel. I’m not very far into it, as King writes long and I like to luxuriate in his enjoyment at having a story to tell and his great affection for his characters. And also, I have things to do.
It’s a time-travel story, and so far it’s set in 1958. I was five years old then (King was 11), and some of my memories of that time are clear. As he describes children playing in Maine, I remember what it was like for me in Ohio.
We played Cowboys and Indians, Cops and Robbers. We played House, and School. None of us had Barbies yet, but we had stuffed animals so we could play Zoo. We made mud pies. We played Kick the Can and had squirt gun fights (see above re: Cowboys and Indians, etc.).
What we didn’t have, in our fantasies, was fantasy. Nobody did any time-traveling. No one went into outer space. There were no Ninja Turtles (or ninjas), no Transformers. There were hardly any Princesses.
When I was a bit older and could read, I liked Greek mythology and fairy tales and comic books, but hardly any of my friends did. Like them, I enjoyed Nancy Drew and The Bobbsey Twins and Cherry Ames, but I wanted more. My mom had some of her storybooks from when she was a girl, and I loved them, with their old illustrations. She introduced me to the works of Edith Nesbit,and I discovered a new way to imagine. Instead of gods and goddesses, nymphs and demons, or royalty protected by fairies, this was fantasy rooted in the real world.
Until I read his Books of Magicin which Neil Gaiman thanks E. Nesbit, I’d never met another person – besides my mom – who had read those stories. If you haven’t read The Railway Children, you’re in for a treat.
From there, my local librarian introduced me to Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. Not knowing it was a classic, I took it for science fiction and read the short story anthology, Tomorrow’s Childrenand from there I discovered Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein and others.
Again, none of my friends were into these books. We might have shared a love of Salinger because by this point we were going through puberty and no one else could understand our intense psychic and spiritual pain. Still, I was the only one mesmerized by the explicitly alternate realities of science fiction writers.
Things are different now. There are involved fantasies for every age group. HBO offers Game of Thrones for adults, and J.K. Rowling has sold hundreds of millions of copies of the Harry Potter books. Star Wars and Star Trek and Doctor Who are cultural milestones, something every culturally literate person is expected to reference. The Avengers movie and the new Batman movie are expected to dominate next year’s box office. Sometimes it seems like half the bookstore shelves are devoted to vampires and/or zombies. And then there’s that Stephen King fellow.
I’d like to think it’s because we’ve become a more tolerant culture, one open to more different perspectives. I only know that genre fiction has brought me a lot of joy. I hope it has the same effect on the rest of the world, especially as we time-travel into the future.
Editor’s Note: That’s Ms. Nesbit up there, looking back at you.
It’s very disconcerting when one of your heroes gets old and cranky and weird. Sadly, this happened to me last week, with respect to one
of America’s greatest living authors,Ray Bradbury.
We knew something was up with the author of such important and even vital classics as Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, and Dandelion Wine back when he called President Clinton a shithead… but, hey, Clinton was President and calling the President a shithead is a great, time-honored tradition. He subsequently wasn’t happy about Michael Moore’s movie Fahrenheit 9/11, thinking
Moore was somehowpiggybacking upon the fame of his stunning novel by conflating the imagery of his story of a repressed future with repression of the then-present.
However, oddly, this past week Ray attacked President Obama for his comments about freedom of religion.
No, Bradbury didn’t say that Obama should be anti-Muslim, or, conversely, that Obama should have specifically backed building the Islamic cultural center at the site for a long-abandoned Burlington Coat Factory. Ray said “He (Obama) should be announcing that we should go back to the moon. We
should never have left there. We should go to the moon and prepare a base to fire a rocket off to Mars and then go to Mars and colonize Mars. Then when we do that, we will live forever.”
I’m still trying to find his segue. I don’t get the connection between the two. Should all future houses of worship be built in space? I don’t know, although maybe NASA should consider the concept as a future source of funding.
Attacking Ray is not going to make me any friends, particularly on the occasion of his 90th birthday. I am proud to have known him. I shared a table with Ray for an hour at the San Diego Comic Con a while ago, I was with him at the debut of his play Wonderful Ice Cream Suit, and we both indulged in a friendship with the late great Julius Schwartz. I wouldn’t trade a moment of those experiences, nor would I abandon the soul-filling wonderment I received from his writing. I will admit to being more experienced than Bradbury when it comes to being cranky and weird.
Bradbury also said we have too many cell phones and too many Internets (sic), and we have to get rid of them. He’s also opposed to electronic books. Sorry, Ray. It’s the 21st Century. Back after World War II there were a whole lot of authors who stigmatized the “cheap” paperback novels that were starting to proliferate. You know, the ones that brought science fiction
writers to a mass audience. You know, writers like Ray Bradbury.
He might not like the term science fiction – I don’t either – but Ray Bradbury was a damned important visionary. Turning your back on the future is one thing, but turning your back on the present is just sad.
It’s just another average day of internet browsing. You’re doing your thing, checking the news, maybe taking a detour to your favorite webcomic. Then, WHAM (or rather, the internet version of said sound effect).
