Armageddon 2419 AD!

Buck Rogers is a name utterly associated with science and especially the speculative science of the pulp magazines and comic strips of the last century. Just as John Carter and Flash Gordon found themselves on distant planets, similarly Buck Rogers is a man who is stranded in time. There are two kinds of time travel, the short kind and the long variety. H.G. Wells wrote of a man who uses his machine to go the quick way into the distant future, a time in which he and all he knew of the world was utterly dead and forgotten. The long type of time travel is the kind we all participate in as we march moment by moment into the minutes, hours, days and weeks of our lives to come. Buck Rogers is a man who went into the future the long way. 

The story of the time traveler Buck Rogers was first told in Hugo Gernsback's Amazing Stories, the premiere "scientifiction" magazine of its era. Although the cover features a flying man, it's not about Buck Rogers. The story titled "Armageddon 2419 AD" tells us how a man is trapped in the depths of the Earth, finds himself in suspended animation, and recovered centuries later. To read that original Philip Francis Nowlan story check out this link.

The story proved quite popular and was reprinted.

It even was taken and expanded into novel form. The version above is the one I first read and still have kicking around here someplace. More Buck Rogers tomorrow.

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