In the 1950s, I read a Classics Illustrated comic strip adaptation of HG Wells' The Time Machine and, in the early 1960s, read The Time Machine itself and Poul Anderson's Guardians of Time, a beginning and a culmination of time travel fiction, in my opinion.
In the 1950s, I knew that Superman came from Krypton and that Micky Moran became Marveleman but not that Billy Batson had become Captain Marvel. I was just too young to remember that missing link between Supes and MM. (Which Poul Anderson novel references Superman and why?)
For a long time, our sf writers were alive and we met them at Cons but Wells was from a different era when a publisher's heading above a list of titles beginning with The Time Machine was not "Science Fiction" but "Mr. Wells has also written the following fantastic and imaginative romances:" Now, the generations have moved on and we are in the twenty-first century, the future.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
While I am not sure who was the first SF writer whose works I read, I think Isaac Asimov's three original FOUNDATION books were among the earliest science fiction I read, in 1967. And the first of Anderson's books I read was the 1965 Chilton Books edition of AGENT OF THE TERRAN EMPIRE in 1968.
Ad astra! Sean
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