Buck Rogers adj.

= science fictional adj.; (specif.) characteristic of hackneyed or dated science fiction

SF Encyclopedia


SF Criticism

  • 1934 Variety 18 Dec. 39/2

    Chinese Charlie — Hey, nix on that. You can’t pull that Buck Rogers stuff on this program.

  • 1936 Lima (Ohio) News 13 Dec. 22/1

    He trails a scientific criminal, all equipped with lethal gas and kindred Buck Rogers gadgets, who has stolen a device that gives him virtual control of the world.

  • 1943 Science News-Letter Jan. 29/2

    This becomes less of a Buck Rogers dream when you consider that there are 30,000 foot-pounds of energy in a single pound of the compressed gas.

  • 1946 R. A. Heinlein Letter 25 Oct. in R. A. Heinlein & V. Heinlein Grumbles from Grave (1990) 106 Robert A. Heinlein

    I am a mechanical engineer, a ballistician, a student of reaction engines… I won’t give an editor any Buck Rogers nonsense.

  • 1959 Fancyclopedia II 138 Dick Eney bibliography

    BUCK ROGERS STUFF What you are asked about when you mention stf to non-fans. ‘What, you read that crazy Buck Rogers stuff?’ Crazy is not used in the bopster connotation. When Philip Nowlan wrote (in the August '28 and March '29 issues of Amazing) about the adventures of Anthony Rogers, an American World War I pilot transferred to the XXV Century (via a mine cave-in followed by suspended animation), neither he nor editor Gernsback dreamed of the frightful curse they were releasing on the stfnal world’s public relations. Nowlan merely developed the idea that rocket guns (like the bazooka of 14 years later) and guerilla tactics would be hard for an enemy to handle with nothing but atomic weapons and aircraft, a thought which has occurred to modern military theorists too. Unhappily Captain Rogers lost his original Christianame and acquired the better-known one in a comic strip which was both the eponym and epitome of all the thud-and-blunder stf that ever poured from hackish typers, which is why you’re still likely to find people, sufficiently shocked, expressing their horror in the sentence quasi-quoted above.

  • 1979 G. Harry Stine Ticket to Space in Omni Mar. 118/3 page image G. Harry Stine

    This is not—repeat, not—‘Buck Rogers stuff,’ suitable only for science-fiction stories, tv series, and Sunday-supplement material.

  • 2014 J. Morrow Madonna and Starship iv. 109 page image James Morrow bibliography

    ‘Connie equates Andromeda with something she calls “that Buck Rogers stuff,” but we’re friends anyway.’ ‘Permit me to suggest that even Buck Rogers stuff is not Buck Rogers stuff,’ said Saul to Connie.


Research requirements

antedating 1934

Earliest cite

Vanity Fair

Research History
Fred Galvin submitted a 1950 cite from a letter from Vernon L. McCain in "Other Worlds Science Stories".
Fred Galvin submitted a 1950 cite for the form "buckrogerish" from a review by Forrest J. Ackerman in "Other Worlds Science Stories".
Fred Galvin submitted a 1946 cite from the introduction to Groff Conklin's "The Best of Science Fiction".
Fred Galvin submitted a cite from a 1948 reprint of Theodore Sturgeon's 1946 "Memorial".
Fred Galvin submitted a 1959 cite from R. H. Eney's "Fancyclopedia II".
Fred Galvin submitted a 1947 cite from P. Schuyler Miller in Astounding.
Fred Galvin submitted a 1946 cite from Groff Conklin's "The Best of Science Fiction".
Bill Mullins submitted a 1936 cite from the Lima, Ohio, News.
Bill Mullins submitted a 1934 cite from Vanity Fair.
Ben Ostrowsky submitted a 2014 cite from James Morrow.

Last modified 2021-10-03 14:46:18
In the compilation of some entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries in OED.