2660

Who are the super-est supermen of pre-Golden Age SF? Dzyd Joshua has the rundown over at io9, complete with great cover art as usual. Best hero name/book title might go to Hugo Gernsback's 124C 41+: A Romance of the Year 2660.



That name reminded me of this Keeler concoction—probably the only character in literature with not just numbers but fractions, multiplication, and shapes in his name:



(from Richard Polt's essay "Race in Keeler")

(Hmmm, time to read Ch. 20 of Crippled Detectives!)

Post #1,000!

Yikes!

1. Bouncing off yesterday's post—I recently had the pleasure of reading some of John Sladek's science fiction parodies (of Hugo Gernsback, PKD, and J.G. Ballard). Hilarious! His PKD parody is entitled "Solar Shoe-Salesman," and features (in its few pages) all manner of Dickian inventions/tics, such as books within books ("Androgynoid, written under the pseudonym 'H.K. (Kid) Cliplip'") and a book constructed using sayings derived from Mah Jongg ("The wise king avoids fried foods")—The Man in the High Castle famously grew out of throws of the I Ching.

2. Arlo recently played Kan-Jam. The Wiki entry includes this term:

Jankowski: A Jankowski is any action or article that the player uses for good luck, such as always flipping the disc before throwing it.