Buck Rogers

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Buck Rogers Remote Controls a Floating Ball (March 1929)

Buck Rogers is a 20th century science fiction hero.

It first appeared in the form of a science fiction story ( Armageddon 2419 AD ) under the name Anthony "Buck" Rogers in August 1928 in the US magazine Amazing Stories . In Armageddon 2419 AD, Buck is stasis in a radioactive gas accident and wakes up 500 years later to see America being controlled by Asian villains. He joins a resistance group and meets Wilma Deering there, who is now his constant companion. You liberate America from the occupiers and are about to embark on a police patrol to avert danger in space. The scientist Dr. Huer, the Martian Innaldo and Tallan from Jupiter. Your opponents are space pirates, tiger people from Mars and again and again the arch-villain Killer Kane and his ally Ardala Valmar, who strives for world domination with him. On the colorful Sunday trips, Wilma's little brother Bud and his girlfriend, the Mar Princess Alura, have separate adventures.

Buck Rogers first appeared in this August 1928 issue of Amazing Stories. The cover shows The Skylark of Space by Edward E. Smith , not Buck Rogers. The illustrator was Frank R. Paul .

The story was written by Philip Francis Nowlan , who also wrote the manuscript for the comic book Buck Rogers in the 25th Century AD . This comic appeared as a daily trip in the newspapers from January 7, 1929 and is considered the world's first science fiction comic. The strip was illustrated by Richard Calkins until 1947 and then by other artists until 1967. Although not very well drawn, the comic was very popular in the United States because it looked extremely futuristic by the standards of the day. The rapidly narrated space opera shows anti-gravity belts, radiation guns, space gliders (scooters), robots and other technical ingredients that were previously only available in the written SF literature of pulp magazines . The newspaper trips also reached a much larger audience than the magazines. Occasionally, in America, the SF genre has been referred to as "the crazy Buck Rogers stuff".

Rogers is also mentioned as a quotation provider in the management area - for example, "Reject mediocrity like a plague, banish it from your life". Historical successors are the comic strips Brick Bradford (1933), Flash Gordon (1934) and Dan Dare (1950), the fictional characters Captain Future (1940) and Perry Rhodan (1961) and the movie Star Wars (1977).

Radio broadcast

The comic history of the newspapers was broadcast from November 7, 1932 to May 1936 on CBS Radio under the title The World in 2432 as a radio play. The show was known for its sound effects: a regiment of marching robots, the impact of a rocket ship on the ground and others. This daily, 15-minute serial was sponsored by Kellogg for the first few years and was a tremendous success. This also resulted in extensive marketing of the comic motifs on the toy market: robots, beam guns, tin rockets and puppet actors as well as board games, card games and watches related to Buck Rogers ( merchandising products) were available for purchase. Buck Rogers was as well known in the United States as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck or Superman, in contrast to other European countries. Many later SF writers and filmmakers grew up watching the Buck Rogers strips and radio broadcasts of the 1930s as children or adolescents, a time when American SF literature was only emerging after Hugo Gernsback wrote Amazing Stories in 1926 and had reprinted stories of Jules Verne and HG Wells . In Europe, on the other hand, space heroes like Buck Rogers, Brick Bradford and Flash Gordon never really got their way. Corresponding publications were soon discontinued due to lack of sales. That space opera's neglect didn't change until the 1970s, after the success of George Lucas' Star Wars films .

Film and television adaptations

A ten-minute Buck Rogers film premiered during the 1933/1934 World's Fair in Chicago. It was titled: Buck Rogers in the 25th Century: An Interplanetary Battle with the Tiger People from Mars .

In 1939, Buck Rogers was filmed as a twelve-part matinee serial . Here Buster Crabbe , who also played the lead role in Flash Gordon, played the role of Buck. The serial was broadcast in 1984 by Bavarian television under the title Buck Rogers in German synchronization. An American television series was created in 1950/1951; the recordings are now considered lost.

In imitation of the big box office success of Star Wars (1977), the producer Glen A. Larson took up the genre "Space Opera" and produced Battle Star Galactica (1978) as a pilot film for an American television series. Some of the models and costumes used were later used by him for the film Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979), also a pilot film in a television series. This series ran in the United States from 1979 to 1981. It was first broadcast in Germany in the mid-1980s. In contrast to the comic, Buck Rogers is a NASA astronaut and is frozen in his space shuttle in an accident. It is thawed 500 years later and returns to earth. This second, more recent version of the story is strongly reminiscent of the classic film Planet of the Apes (1968) , which appeared eleven years earlier . The new figures introduced for this version include the Twiki robot (for its type designation TWKE4) and Dr. Theopolis, a computer brain.

Computer games

There are three computer games for Buck Rogers: Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom (1982) by Sega , Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday (1990) and the corresponding second part Buck Rogers - Matrix Cubed (1992), both by SSI .

music

On the album Echo Park by the British rock band Feeder , a track called Buck Rogers appeared, which in 2001 was also the first single for the album.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Horst Schröder: Pictorial worlds and world views, science fiction in the USA, in Germany, England and France. Carlsen Verlag 1982