fanboy2000
Adventurer
Forked from: Lorraine Williams did... what?
I actually read some of the Buck Rogers XXVC books TSR put out. They sucked. There were a number of reasons for this. 1) Buck Rogers was the most interesting character in the series. 2) He was hardly in the book. 3) They kept referencing computer terminology that was obsolete by the time the ink was dry on the page. 4) All characters in the series were 2D, cardboard cut-outs.
I actually felt betrayed reading the books. The first book, Arrival, is a collection of short stories, the first concerns Buck Rogers as a principal character. It's been years sense I read the book, but I believe he's only in one other short story, and even then it's very minor.
The next is The Martian Wars Trilogy. Again, Buck's presence is a cameo. An important cameo, but a cameo none the less. It just gets worse from there. Latter books de-emphasized the Buck Rogers names, and still later books removed the name altogether, leaving it just XXVC.
JohnRTroy said:Actually, there IS renewed interest in the property, since the whole reason that site is up there is because there's a new comic coming out and Frank Miller is doing a Buck Rogers movie. (Although good luck with that, after the Spirit has flopped I don't believe Miller's take on old properties should be followed, assuming Flint's looking at doing a "Sin City" type file).
However, you are correct about the property's current state. Buck Rogers is sort of a relic from the past. Since it came from the pulp-era and also was showing the future as imagined then, it comes off as dated. Science Fiction from the past tends to not age well. I think the 1970s series was the last successful attempt at this. I think the Dille family is pushing it as "retro-future".
I actually read some of the Buck Rogers XXVC books TSR put out. They sucked. There were a number of reasons for this. 1) Buck Rogers was the most interesting character in the series. 2) He was hardly in the book. 3) They kept referencing computer terminology that was obsolete by the time the ink was dry on the page. 4) All characters in the series were 2D, cardboard cut-outs.
I actually felt betrayed reading the books. The first book, Arrival, is a collection of short stories, the first concerns Buck Rogers as a principal character. It's been years sense I read the book, but I believe he's only in one other short story, and even then it's very minor.
The next is The Martian Wars Trilogy. Again, Buck's presence is a cameo. An important cameo, but a cameo none the less. It just gets worse from there. Latter books de-emphasized the Buck Rogers names, and still later books removed the name altogether, leaving it just XXVC.