Old School Sci Fi

I should be using this extra time to catch up on assignments for my masters programs, but I decided that the time will be better served by posting on the blog. I started writing science fiction when I was around ten years old. My stories were more like comic books, and they had been inspired by many old SF shows from the 1950's to the early 1980's. I started actually reading whole novels when I was around fifteen years old. I was influenced by the works of Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Donald Wollheim, Robert Heinlein, and Arthur C. Clarke. I wrote a few stories where I tried to emulate these great masters, but the stories sounded more like pulp magazine stories. I gave up on writing any kind of science fiction until a few years ago.

I wanted to model my stories off of more mature works of the genre. When I am using the term mature, I am referring to the more recent novels and short stories of the last twenty or so years. I thought that the old stories of the fifties and earlier were a little childish and naive compared to more contemporary stories.

That opinion started changing in the last few years. The ezine, "Raygun Revival," renewed my love of the old stories. They were not so much focused on sex as many of the modern stories of today are. They were clean and very entertaining. I recently discovered the Internet Archives where I have been downloading MP3's of old time radio science fiction shows like "X Minus One," "Buck Rogers," "Space Patrol," and an old BBC program "Journey in Space." It was cool to listen to them. I started realizing that these old school SF stories were not always corny. Many of them were very original and thought provoking. "Buck Rogers" and "Space Patrol" were very corny, but they tried to introduce a generation of youngsters to science and the possibilities of spaceflight.