Wednesday Worlds of Wonder ORBIT "Marooned Off Vesta"

 We All Know Isaac Asimov!

Amazing Stories March 1939 Art by Robert Fuqa

The Three Laws of Robotics!

Several seminal series including Foundation, Galactic Empire, and Robots...all of which have been unified into one massive universe!

Literally hundreds of novels, novellas and short stories!

Amazing Stories, March 1959 Art by Virgil Finlay

But did you ever read his very first story?

(The pages above are from the tale's first publication in 1939 and it's (1959) 20th Anniversary appearance in the same magazine!

Now here's the never-reprinted 50th Anniversary adaptation of that tale, scripted by JD Scott and illustrated by Michael Davis.

It appeared in #2 of Eclipse's sci-fi anthology Orbit, which featured adaptations of stories from Davis Publications' Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine! and several of Asimov's own stories!

When the prose version of this story was reprinted in 1959 for its' 20th Anniversary appearance in Amazing Stories, Asimov penned a sequel, "Anniversary", featuring the characters gathering to celebrate their survival and then having a new, related, adventure!

The two tales have usually been reprinted together since.

But there's been no graphic adaptation of "Anniversary"...yet!

Next Week: A New World of Wonder!

Monday Mecha Madness ADAM LINK!

This Requires a Little Explanation/Background...

Introduced in Ziff-Davis' sci-fi anthology Amazing Stories (1939), Adam Link was the first ongoing series about a sentient robot!

Though credited to "Eando Binder" (a pen-name used by author brothers Earl and Otto Binder when they worked together), the Adam Link stories were entirely Otto's work!
Adam was no soulless automaton!
From his introduction onward (and Binder used the title "I, Robor" before Isaac Asimov) he was on a quest to become as human as possible!
Though created to be totally-logical, he developed emotions!
In fact, after his second story "Trial of Adam Link" where he was accused of killing his creator (scientist Dr Charles Link, not Otto Binder), though found innocent (he was framed)  he decided he couldn't go on living without his "father", and decided to commit suicide.
That's the basis of the third tale, "Adam Link's Vengeance", where another scientist (of the "mad" variety), prevents his untimely death, and plans to use him as a weapon!

That particular story was adapted by writer/editor Bill Spicer and artist D Bruce Berry into a two-part story in Spicer's prozine Fantasy Illustrated in 1965 and reprinted in Spicer's Graphic Story Magazine (under a new Berry cover) in 1971.

You'll be seeing that over the next two Mondays.

The comic story was done shortly after the Adam Link tales were adapted into a fix-up novel combining all the short stories...

Note the Isaac Asimov quote!

BTW, if the name "Otto Binder"sounds familiar to comics fans, that's because he wrote a lot of DC, Quality, Timely, and Fawcett comics in the Golden and Silver Ages, as well co-creating among others, the Legion of Super Heroes, Black Adam, Braniac, Kid Eternity, Krypto, Young Allies, Mary Marvel, Bizarro, and Supergirl!

But, for some, he's best-known as the writer of the first Marvel Comics prose novel...

Bantam's The Avengers vs the Earth-Wrecker!

(Dig the Doc Savage-style logo!)

BTW, We'll be running this long OOP & HTF novel this summer during the annual RetroBlogs Summer Blogathon!