space. not quite as frontier-like as we may have led you to believe

Forty years after a human foot inside a space boot touched that moon of ours, we have yet to get a single Starbucks, Wal-Mart, commercial mining operation, or robo space-monkey army training facility up there. What the hell is taking so long? While we wait, we are left only to look back and marvel at those phenomenal astronauts of yesteryear. How their steely gazed determination haunts me to this day! Why, every time I flip a pancake deftly from my non-stick frying pan I think of those brave men with their corn-fed good looks and unshakable belief in the American way! They were heroes when being a hero meant something dag-nabit. When I grow up, I want to be an astronaut they used to say. And didn't we all? Of course. The dream lay before each and every one of us. Well... except for girls. And colored people. But still, pull yourselves up by the bootstraps I say! With the usefulness of costly space exploration now firmly established, I would like to move on. As a child of the 1930s, 40s, 50s and early 60s, I was quite fond of the "science fiction" genre of pulp magazine. Every month I would appear, Jack-in-the-Box-like, before the postman at the mailbox. Springing forth upon the hapless old coot I would demand my space adventure stories. Give me Jack McManny I would shout. I want to know what became of Brock Greybrick and the Holy Hellbound Hellions of Astro-Hell X4 I says. Did the mantis queen of giga-005 suck the vital essence from the underside naughty parts of Guy Strongman? I hope not. Without further ado, I present some of my favorite space-themed pulp covers from times past. How has that future we envisioned as Kraut / Jap / Commie hating young men and women held up to the slow and steady drum beat of time?

Deathly fear of giant space ant uprising?

Check.

Smashing robots with human brains?

That's Robobrain from Fallout 3 and that's another "check."

Giant man-eating vagina flowers?

Check.

Life lesson: "beauty is only skin deep?"

Check.

Guffaw producing value of mischevious monkeys?

Check.

Princess Leia slave outfit?

Check and no further comment.

Phallus-mobiles?

Check.

Hm. So we seem to have come not very far at all. All the greatest minds of our time could come up with only manages to palely approximate those fanciful dreams of our predecessors. In fact, they did us one better in a number of ways. Those pulp covers are 99% more excellent than 3/4 of the so-called "adventure book stories" peddled to our unsuspecting children these days. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows indeed!

Oh well, until next time, catch phrase and an exclamation point.