Buck Rogers and the Popularization of Spaceflight

In preparation for a course that I am teaching this semester at Johns Hopkins University on “Spaceflight and Society,” I have been reviewing the early conceptions of spaceflight in the early twentieth century. One of the ideas that has stood out is the place of science fiction in affecting the process of creating the technology for spaceflight. I liked a great deal the importance of the stories, comic strips, radio series, and film serials of Buck Rogers and its place in this history. While it is pure fiction some of the ideas about rockets with wings, for example, had an important affect on ideas about the possibilities of spaceplanes.

Buck Rogers emerged as a household name in the United States when Philip Francis Nowlan created the fictional spacefarer in 1928 as the hero of two novellas published in the science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories. That story, “Armageddon—2419,” involved Anthony “Buck” Rogers, a young engineer who was trapped in a Pennsylvania mine in the year 1975, and rendered unconscious by “radioactive gas.” When he awoke it was 2419, theAmerica he knew was in ruins, and it was under attack by the evil Mongolian “air lords” of the Han Empire. Along with sidekicks Wilma Deering and Dr. Huer, Buck Rogers leads a successful effort to defeat the forces of tyranny.

Buck Rogers Comic Strip in Atlanta Journal, October 17, 1937.

He soon became a fixture in newspapers nationwide in a long-running syndicated comic strip. Buck Rogers, premiered in newspapers on January 7, 1929, and was an immediate success, with a color strip for the Sunday funnies following on March 30, 1930. The Buck Rogers radio program commenced in 1932, and aired four times a week for the next fifteen years.

This spawned a movie, Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century: An Interplanetary Battle with the Tiger Men of Mars, which premiered at the Century of Progress Fair in Chicago in 1933. A twelve-part serial followed in 1939 with Buster Crabbe in the title role. Much later, Buck Rogers debuted in a live television series 1950-1951, and NBC updated the franchise with Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century during the 1979-1980 seasons. Video and other games, graphic novels, and memorabilia of staggering proportions has kept the Buck Rogers name alive since. This popular culture icon paralleled the advancement of space technology in the twentieth century and introduced Americans to outer space as a familiar environment for swashbuckling adventure.

Here is a humorous scene from the recent television series starring Gil Girard.