In January 1929, newspaper readers were introduced to a new type of adventure hero. Anthony "Buck" Rogers was America's first great science-fiction star. The influential Buck Rogers strip introduced futuristic exploits set in outer space that featured advanced technologies like laser beams, antigravity devices, atomic warfare, and television (see entry under 1940s—The Way We Lived in volume 3). John Dille (1884–1957), one of Buck's creators, quoted in Mike Benton's The Illustrated History of Science Fiction Comics, said, "I wanted to produce a strip which would present imaginary adventures several centuries in the future. I wanted a strip in which the test tubes and laboratories of the scientists could be garnished up with a bit of imagination and treated as realities." The success of Buck Rogers sparked a public interest in science fiction that remains strong to this day.

Buck Rogers depicts the adventures of a twentieth-century pilot who...