Background
Philip Francis Nowlan was born on November 13, 1888, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.
Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
Philip Francis Nowlan graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 1910.
(The groundbreaking novella that gave rise to science fict...)
The groundbreaking novella that gave rise to science fiction’s original space hero, Buck Rogers. In 1927, World War I veteran Anthony Rogers is working for the American Radioactive Gas Corporation investigating strange phenomena in an abandoned coal mine when suddenly there’s a cave-in. Trapped in the mine and surrounded by radioactive gas, Rogers falls into a state of suspended animation for nearly five hundred years. Waking in the year 2419, he first saves the beautiful Wilma Deering from attack and then discovers what has befallen his country: The United States has descended into chaos after Asian powers conquered the world with advanced weaponry centuries before. All that’s left are ragtag gangs battling for survival against their brutal overlords. But when Rogers shows them how to band together and fight for more than mere survival, he sparks a revolution that will decide the fate of the future world.
https://www.amazon.com/Armageddon-2419-Philip-Francis-Nowlan-ebook/dp/B06Y64BZ4K/?tag=2022091-20
1928
(Recovering from a gas that caused him to sleep for five h...)
Recovering from a gas that caused him to sleep for five hundred years, Anthony "Buck" Rogers helped an enslaved America strike its first blow for freedom against the alien Han. Now, he and beloved, warrior-woman Wilma Deering, must lead a desperate battle to the finish against a superior foe - using futuristic weapons such as disintegrators, jumping belts, inertron, paralysis rays, and atomic torpedoes. The climactic conflict features a special effects battle of ships and rays that would challenge even today's greatest filmmakers to reproduce successfully on film.
https://www.amazon.com/Airlords-Han-Armageddon-D-Original-ebook/dp/B000FCK26U/?tag=2022091-20
1929
(Buck Rogers Creator's Greatest Novel! Move over Edgar Ric...)
Buck Rogers Creator's Greatest Novel! Move over Edgar Rice Burroughs. Give it up John Carter! In this classic pulp novel from the 1930s Amazing Stories, by Philip Francs Nowlan, you'll meet Daniel Hanley, the astronaut whose crash landing on Mars places him in more trouble than John Carter ever dreamed of. Because his name is similar to that of a legendary Martian prince, whose return from the dead has long been prophesized, Hanley finds himself elected to wed a beautiful warrior maid and then lead a revolution against the Red Planet's tyrannical ruler. If you loved Armageddon-2419 A.D., you won't want to miss Nowlan's The Prince of Mars Returns.
https://www.amazon.com/Prince-Returns-Philip-Francis-Nowlan-ebook/dp/B004HZYHCQ/?tag=2022091-20
1940
Philip Francis Nowlan was born on November 13, 1888, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.
Philip Francis Nowlan graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 1910.
Philip Francis Nowlan was the creator of one of the best-known characters in the science fiction genre - Buck Rogers. Nowlan himself never penned a novel concerning Rogers, though his two novellas - which originally appeared in Amazing Stories in 1928 and 1929 - were posthumously combined in Armageddon 2419 A.D. (1962). Following the novellas, however, Nowlan wrote a comic strip version of Roger's adventures, sometimes aided in this effort by artist Dick Calkins. The comic strips have been collected into book form in several different volumes, including Buck Rogers on the Moons of Saturn, published in 1934, and the 1969 volume The Collected Works of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.
Rogers, whose “real” first name was Anthony, first appeared in “Armageddon 2419.” The character was an engineer who, in 1929, was overcome by poisonous fumes in a Pennsylvania mine. The experience placed him in suspended animation, and when he revives, it is the twenty-fifth century, and the United States of America has been conquered by Mongolians or Hans. Rogers wanders for a time, but eventually hooks himself up to the scattered resistance movement, finding among their numbers Wilma Deering, whom he marries. With his aggressive twentieth-century war tactics-recalled from World War I - he helps the Americans fight the Hans. The struggle continues in the second novella, “The Airlords of Han.”
Nowlan has been credited - through Wilma Deering - with being ahead of his time in his creation of strong female characters. Although she does exhibit some stereotypically “weak” feminine behavior, like crying and fainting, she also performs brave deeds such as coming to Rogers’ rescue in an American-built “air ball” space ship. When it comes to issues of race, however, the original Buck Rogers stories are much less progressive. Nowlan makes frequent reference to the “White Race in America,” and there is also a line about “the simple, spiritual Blacks of Africa.” And while Nowlan hints that the Hans have a trace of alien ancestry, they are mostly described as ethnic Chinese and also as unfailingly evil. Their complete destruction at the end of “The Airlords of Han” is seen as an unqualified good, though Alan Kalish, Michael Fath, Chris Ehrman, John Gant, and Richard D. Erlich liken it in an article for Extrapolation to the genocide committed by Nazi Germany.
When the novellas were combined in 1962, and when that combination was updated and revised by science fiction writer Spider Robinson in 1978, much of the original racism was removed, but it was impossible to get around the destruction of the Hans. For his version, Robinson primarily concerned himself with making the technology more believable to contemporary readers of science fiction, and with making Wilma an even stronger feminist hero.
As for the various Buck Rogers comic books, Buck Rogers, Twenty-fifth Century A.D., in the Interplanetary War with Venus (1938) is noteworthy because it carries Buck’s world into conflict with real aliens - the Venusians. As Michael M. Levy in Twentieth-Century Science-Fiction Writers reported, the Venusians “seem quite human except for their skin color” and are “totally evil, totally decadent.” Despite the dated signs of racism in his writings, concluded Levy, “Nowlan was a talented writer, and, despite his small output, he is one of the most influential science fiction writers” of his era. Levy also compared the author favorably with another science fiction pioneer, Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Nowlan also wrote several other novellas for the science fiction magazines as well as the posthumously published mystery, The Girl from Nowhere.
(Recovering from a gas that caused him to sleep for five h...)
1929(The groundbreaking novella that gave rise to science fict...)
1928(Buck Rogers Creator's Greatest Novel! Move over Edgar Ric...)
1940Nowlan was a member of The Mask and Wig Club, holding significant roles in the annual productions between 1907 and 1909.
Nowlan was married to Theresa Junker. They had ten children: Philip, Mary, Helen, Louise, Theresa, Mike, Larry, Pat, John, and Joe.