I found today’s cover on the Books From The Crypt daily pulp gallery, and it reminds me of a topic I’ve been hoping to tackle.
There are a lot of neat things that the pulp writers speculated on, but there’s also a few things that weren’t often considered by these writers.
Looking at the hero’s backpack, I was reminded of one of those “missing things” in pulp writing — the computer, much less the portable laptop kind.
For some reason, it wasn’t even considered at the time that there would be devices used to make massive calculations and perform mundane, automated tasks.
Instead, such work was regulated to robots (who are essentially walking computers, but still quite different) or a function of a larger device, such as a rocket ship.
I’m sure that later on writers like Isaac Asimov created such devices for their stories, but through most of the pre-nuclear age, pre-space age sci-fi era they just weren’t around.
There are a lot of neat things that the pulp writers speculated on, but there’s also a few things that weren’t often considered by these writers.
Looking at the hero’s backpack, I was reminded of one of those “missing things” in pulp writing — the computer, much less the portable laptop kind.
For some reason, it wasn’t even considered at the time that there would be devices used to make massive calculations and perform mundane, automated tasks.
Instead, such work was regulated to robots (who are essentially walking computers, but still quite different) or a function of a larger device, such as a rocket ship.
I’m sure that later on writers like Isaac Asimov created such devices for their stories, but through most of the pre-nuclear age, pre-space age sci-fi era they just weren’t around.
More about this issue: PLANET Stories: Winter 1943 – Love Romances, NY; Pulp; Vol. 2, No. 5. Cover by Gross for “Crypt-City of the Deathless One” by Henry Kuttner. Includes “The Star Guardsman” by Albert DePina; “Conspiracy on Callisto” by James MacCreigh (Frederik Pohl); “Castaways of Eros” by Nelson S. Bond; “Destination-Death” by Wilbur S. Peacock; “Blackout” by Joseph Farrell. Cartoon: “The Ringer Family” by Guy Gifford. Letters from Chad Oliver, Leigh Brackett, and Guy Gifford. Illustrations uncredited.
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