Bookery

You can if you want, I guess. Not sure I see the point in this context. In the end -- the book is the book. She wasn't the first or last author to have had a troubled life. In general, I don't think there have been many works of fiction created by happy, trouble-free people. She is one of the most famous names in ALL of literary history... hardly a good candidate for someone not being given her historical due! We have a need to want to categorize and organize information. But not everything fits into easy definitions. Ray Bradbury never wrote a true science-fiction story in his life, and yet is often lumped into that genre. He certainly didn't consider himself a science-fiction writer. Harlan Ellison never though of himself as a science-fiction writer either, and only some of his material would probably fit the category. Editor Ted White, one of the ones who hated the term "sci-fi", would not have considered Buck Rogers or Star Wars to be science-fiction at all. In fact, he felt Rogers and Flash Gordon were responsible for taking science-fiction out of the literary arena it once held, reducing it to B-movie fodder and kid's stuff in the public and media's eyes. Personally, I see Verne as being an adventure writer, and Wells' works having far more science-fiction about them. And to dovetail this back to comics... the super-hero genre obvious owes its allegiance to Buck and Flash, and not to Captain Nemo or Dr. Moreau. I think it is most fair to say that Shelley wrote the first science-fiction novel... and that Verne and Wells established the science-fiction genre.

So? People can have differing opinions without being bigots. There's a case to be made for Verne and Wells, but I think you're limiting the definition of science-fiction by doing so. But that's just my opinion. As far as I know there is only one major genre that can be ascribed as to having been created by a single person, and that's the detective story invented by Poe. And even in that case, I suspect if you dug around into really obscure and forgotten stories you might find other contenders... if you are early and famous, you're more likely to be given credit than someone nobody has ever heard of. Hammett and Chandler are often given credit for creating the sub-genre of the hard-boiled detective story. But the first hard-boiled detective was Three-Gun Terry created by Carroll John Daly. However, Hammett's first hard-boiled story came out just weeks afterward, so he couldn't have been inspired by Daly. It was just the right time for that sort of story to appear, and clearly more than one writer was developing it at the same time. Shelley's Frankenstein did not immediately inspire imitators, insomuch as the science-fiction aspect of it. So obviously other writers of the time still saw it as a gothic novel rather than some new genre they couldn't imagine. A half-century later Wells and Verne did inspire numerous imitators. A lot of that clearly had to do with the industrial revolution and the new cultural obsessions with machines and inventions. Shelley was ahead of her time, but wouldn't have even known it herself. She saw science as an angle to tell her morality play... but remember, the story was born of a contest to create a "ghost story", not to invent a new literary genre. That doesn't mean it's not the first sf story (clearly I think it is)... but it means there are lot of factors involved in its evolution. Also Shelley never wrote anything else along that line, whereas Wells and Verne defined their careers in the genre (though Wells wasn't happy about it).

See my above post.

Whoa! I think you're reading a lot into something that I don't think is there. First off, as I said, I believe the consensus, at least among creators of science-fiction, IS that Frankenstein in the first sf novel. So I'm not sure who it is you're attacking here. And for those that want to move that qualification up to the latter 19th century, I think it has more to do with the gothic romance traditions of Frankenstein than the gender of the writer. As I stated earlier, this has been amplified by the movies, which is where the vast majority of people have their concept of the material. Verne and Wells are more technically-oriented Victorian authors, and have a drier less poetic approach to the material. The early writers of Amazing Stories were probably more inspired by Verne and Wells in their styles, and so a link was established. The traditions of Shelley and Poe inspired a different direction, taken up by the likes of Gaston Leroux, Ambrose Bierce, Bram Stoker, etc. I think if you were to poll the writing community you would find that Shelley ranks higher in the literary hierarchy than Wells and especially Verne, who is seen more of as an adventure writer in line with H. Rider Haggard and others. So I'm not sure where you're seeing the bias.

A side point I find interesting... the old pulpsters and a lot of the classic science-fiction writers absolutely abhorred the term "sci-fi" (detractors pronounced it "skiffy" to show their displeasure). One of them went so far as to claim it made him physically ill every time he saw it. They preferred the use of "SF" if an abbreviation was needed. Some others acknowledged the term had use, but said it bespoke to a specific sub-genre. They saw space opera and the kind of swashbuckling adventure story set on other worlds to be "sci-fi"... such as Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, John Carter, and Star Wars. But PDK, Clarke, Ellison, Pohl, Herbert, etc., wrote science-fiction.

I think it was that time I posted the full text of Finnegan's Wake here on the boards. I don't know what I was thinking of.

We also tend to conflate novels with their screen adaptations. I'm sure Shelley would have seen her novel as a contemplation of scientific research, and if I recall, the novel does go into some detail on the medical side of it. The Universal Studios film, however, definitely emphasized the horror aspects. I think studios in general figure audiences aren't interested in lots of scientific analysis, and that's why nearly all science-fiction in film slides either to the horror side of it, or the adventure approach. "The Time Machine" is decidedly science-fiction, and yet the Morlocks are out of the horror tradition. "Dr. Jekyll" splits science and horror down the middle. I studied a lot about genres in film school, and the rather unusual thing about genres is that each one is defined by something entirely different. There is no one rule fits all. Both Horror and Comedy are defined by the audience's visceral reaction to the material (and they actually share a lot in common). The western is defined purely by setting. The Costume Adventure is defined by time period and set decoration. The Crime Drama is defined by its characters. The Musical is defined by that singular attribute, but otherwise can encompass any other genre within it. Science-Fiction is defined by plot elements. Melodrama is defined by tone. Film Noir is defined by its stylistic approach to the subject.

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A case might be made that Re-Animator is sf. It's been awhile, but IIRC a scientist creates a device to enter another dimension in From Beyond? But it seems that dimension has little to do with science and more to do with Lovecraft's Cthulhu dimension of gods and demons. Zombie movies will sometimes employ a virus as their rationale, but it's a device of little consequence beyond the initial set-up, as they could just as easily risen from a magic incantation or from no known reason (as in the original Night of the Living Dead).

I'm late to this topic, but I think if you were to poll actual science-fiction authors, the general consensus is that Frankenstein is the first true science-fiction novel. There were a number of voyage-to-the-moon stories prior to that, but they had no science basis (you flew to the moon in a sailing ship, or dreamed your way there, or were carried by angels, etc.). The one possible exception is a tale by Cyrano de Bergerac, that I believed used a rocket to travel to the moon... putting it into a sort of proto-sf category... but nothing else in the story dealt with science. To be a science-fiction story, science has to be critical to the plot structure, and the science must be speculative in nature (otherwise Medical Center would be considered sf). In fact, I believe you'll find today a tendency by authors to want to replace science-fiction with the term Speculative Fiction. When I was in college, this was the subject of one of my term papers (although it dealt strictly with sf in cinema). As I recall, at the time (late '70s) I put forth that fewer than a dozen true science-fiction movies had been made to that point. By "true sf", I meant a story that could not exist outside the genre of science-fiction, as opposed to merely having sf trappings. Thus Forbidden Planet and 2001 are "true sf" films, whereas Alien is a haunted house movie adorned with sf designs, and Star Wars is a WW2 movie set in "space". Looking back, this was probably too narrow of a definition (but it got me an "A", so that's what counts).

It depends on what years you are talking about. Those three titles, if from the '60s and '70s (and possibly even earlier), in G-VG (and higher) we put out in our 99-cent boxes. They would have to be in really sweet condition to move up to our $5 section. Issues from the '40s... that's different.

You brought a movie into the discussion to make an analogy with what is going on in the comics industry, I understand that. I'm just commenting on how animated (no pun intended) the discussion got when it followed-up on your point and went full-bore cinema. Now to be honest... I'm over-simplifying. If I were to be fair, let's face it... after 20 years of a comics board, most topics have been covered endlessly, which is why fresh meat, even if it's not solely on-topic, is often devoured with gusto. I just thought there was a bit of irony is all, and was having some fun with the observation. [It's the Friday after Thanksgiving, and I'm also clearly stalling on getting back into the drudge of processing a pile of drek].

Perhaps the future of comic books is actually being encapsulated in this very thread. On a comics board on a comics thread about the future direction of comics, the conversation quickly switches and becomes more animated on debates about movies. I'm not complaining... free-wheeling topics go where they go (I'm here reading it aren't I?). But if even comics nerds can get more fired-up about movie discussions, it's not hard to understand where the broader public's interest lies and will continue into the future.

Of course, the debate about comic book "ages" will eventually be moot. I suspect in 20 years or so, the comics fans of that period will simply break all of comic history into just two ages... the "paper age" and the "digital age". [kidding... but only a little]

I watched the TV Superman in the mid-60s on re-runs, but even as a kid by that point it seemed pretty hokey. It was certainly never a substitute for the Legion of Super-Heroes flying around the galaxy, or the fascination I had at the time with the quirkier heroes like Metal Men, Metamorpho, Sea Devils (or even the Fat Fury!). I watched "Batman" for laughs, but never confused it with the "real" (New Direction) Batman in the comics. Horror is an interesting comic genre. I really believe, were it not for the Code, horror would have become co-dominant with heroes in the '60s, as again it's a genre that TV wasn't allowed to do in anything other than very tame versions (compare "Twilight Zone" with the Hammer movies for example, or even with what was developing in the b&w magazines exempt from the code).

Yes... but comic collectors weren't really a thing until the latter 1960s... by which time I still feel the other genres had already faded away due to TV. I think from the '60s onward, comic books became inextricably associated with the super-hero, certainly as far as news media was concerned (boosted hugely by the Batman TV show).

Though their dominance didn't last long. I think they took off 1938-1941 partially because they led the pack in being all-original material... prior to that most comics were comprised of newspaper reprints. The demand for all-original stories certainly was explosive. Dell's 2nd Four Color series didn't get started until 1941, WDC&S and Classics Illustrated didn't have their first full year until 1942. The crime, horror, and romance genres didn't really get going until after WW2, so there really wasn't much competition for super-heroes in those first few years. Comics were geared almost exclusively to kids up to and through WW2. Afterward, companies began exploring genres to attract a bit older audience. This expanded their audience successfully... but also led to their demise because of the Comics Code, which they couldn't have foreseen coming. Super-heroes, of course, didn't really flourish again until DCs silver-age re-boot, aimed at a bit older audience, and then Marvel, aimed at an even older audience still.

It's just a theory, but if one looks at the timeline, super-hero comics really didn't become the dominant genre of comics until the '60s and '70s. I think the mass-arrival of television had a lot to do with that. Once TV dominated every household, one could satisfy one's entertainment for most genres for free (tons of westerns, soap operas replacing romance comics, detective and crime stories aplenty, animated cartoons by the dozens, etc.). The one genre that couldn't be done well on TV was super-heroes, due to budget and technological restraints. So if you wanted your super-hero fix, comics were pretty much it. When CGI changed all that, comic collecting initially boomed with the crossover interest from new mega-budget movies. But now super-stuff in movies and TV is commonplace... there simply aren't enough hours in the week for one to watch all the stuff that is available to them, leaving out the video game market on top of that. It will be interesting to see if comics still hold fascination in super-heroes, now that there is literally no genre that can't be produced for live-action mediums.

It is certainly quite rare... but so are many other pulp issues. I've always felt the art was particularly awful on this issue. When I first saw it many years ago, I had to stare at it awhile to figure out exactly what was going on (the human figure kind of merges into the ape in an awkward manner). [Also I tried some balloon juice the other day, and must admit I didn't care for that either.]

I don't mind putting raw pulps out on a table to flip through, but I find overhangs to be so important that I usually trim them off the pulps and place them in mylar bags to be preserved for future generations.

(I assume we're talking animation here)... Probably Bullwinkle. And maybe for historical significance, Betty Boop.

Wow! My apologies! I could have sworn I was seeing "Heritage" on the shirt-badge, which is where I made the assumption. You did a great job... a lot of detail was covered and I watched the entire thing in one sitting (when I should have been processing product, dangit!). Even though I wrote guides to pulps (by default, as nobody else ever wanted to), I have a love/hate relationship with them. I love historical artifacts, esp. those of the paper variety. I like the art and history of them. But I also find them a pain to deal with, in that they tend to leave piles of debris about as I bag and grade them. It can be difficult to flip through pages, and tanning and browning would make many unpleasant for me to try and read. Oddly enough, I find the slabbing of pulps a bit more enticing than I do with comics, for the above reasons. As a dealer, I doubt if it will be cost-effective for me to slab very many (I tend to be rather generous when buying collections, and the added cost of slabbing might make them too expensive for the levels my specific market will bear). But I am probably more likely to slab pulps in the future than comics (especially if the internal material is available in other formats). At any rate, your interview is far and away the best information and images we've had to date about this newest CGC endeavor.

I didn't mean there was any nefarious connection... but the two companies serve each others' interests (i.e., symbiotic). It is unlikely CGC would have the position it has today with comic book auctions were it not for CGC grading. Were it not for the constant publicity said auctions and many record-setting prices bring, would CGC be getting anywhere near the business it does, especially with large and significant collections? Each company has improved business because of the other, which is to be expected. It is Heritage interviewing CGC in the above video, afterall.

On the plus side, science has vanquished another hideous malady from the planet. After 500 years, mankind need no longer fear the "paper cut".