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A Good "Raygun Future" Setting?


Steve

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While not directly 'Flash Gordon' (or even HERO System for that matter) you might want to look for/at the 'Gernsback' alternate Earth from the GURPS supplements Infinite Worlds, and Alternate Earths. The basic plotline (without, I hope, breaking too much copy-write) is that Nicola Tesla was able to control some of his mental health issues and ended up marrying Anne Morgan, daughter of millionaire and philanthropist J. P. Morgan. The added stability of his wife and the financial support of his father-in-law allowed him to turn a variety of his hypothesized inventions (such as broadcast power) into reality.

 

-Carl-

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There's an element from Blackwyrm Games's The Algernon Files: The Fires of War (a generally excellent setting/supplement for HERO Pulp/Golden Age supers gaming) that might fit with your purposes, On an alternate-timeline Earth, Imperial China exploited its early technological superiority to other civilizations to a degree it never did on our world, ultimately making it master of the planet. That included building on China's early successes with black-powder rockets to achieve manned space flight centuries before our civilization, and ultimately to colonizing the Moon.

 

A freak dimensional convergence causes the Moon from this timeline to swap places with our own, along with its millions of inhabitants and China's ruler, the justly-named Emperor of Heaven, who now aspires to make himself master of this Earth.

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Slipstream, Cosmic Patrol and the GURPS books were pretty good idea sources. Thank you for the suggestions.

 

For a darker look at a "Raygun Future" setting, I recently came across a miniseries called "Ignition City" by Alan Moore that's proving to be pretty interesting. It's set in an alternate 1950s where Earth fought wars with expies of the likes of Ming the Merciless and the Martians and has decided to turn its back on space exploration. Ignition City is the last operating spaceport on Earth and gives a strong Mos Eisley vibe mixed with noir.

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Your last post made me think of a question.

 

By "Raygun Future" are you thinking:

 

1950's tailsitter and/or saucers like Rocketship XM, Destination Moon, Earth vs the Flying Saucers and Forbidden Planet.

 

Or

 

1930/40's horizontal rockets like Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and so on.

 

The 50's shows tended to be more 'modern' and tried to be more 'realistic' while the 30/40's shows were more serial action story with the rockets just as backdrop. 

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In 1952 Republic Pictures put out the 12 part serial Radar Men from The Moon.  It featured George Wallace (not the Governor) as Commando Cody, who flew using a jetpack, and used a rocketship to travel to the moon.  He even had a ray gun.

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Armageddon 2419 A.D. by Philip Francis Nowlan.  The original novella the created Buck Rogers.  Modern copies are usually both novellas in the two part story: Amageddon 2419 A.D. (1928) and The Airlords of Han (1929).

 

Great books and not what most people think of when they think Buck Rogers,

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