Rocket Ship X-4

If its true that each generation re-visits what they grew up with, then RocketShip X-4 is my paean to the cheezy black and white Future-Adventure-Pulp movies I would watch on Sunday afternoons in the 70s and 80s.

I started writing the story Lost as a story in the style of 1950s pulp. With silver cigar shaped rocket ships riding columns of flames. Complete with atomic ray guns and silver spacesuits. All set in the distant future of the 1980s!

I am trying to write using "common knowledge" of the 50's and deliberately using wildly bad science that I think sounds appropriate for the era (no orbital mechanics, just drive the ship that way until you get there!). All radio and vacuum tubes and atomic power.

In the Defense Base Delta universe, Venus is a jungle world and Mars is a barely habitable desert. Maybe I will even write some little green moon men eventually.

Lost

Lost was the original story I started for X-4. The basic idea was the ship suffers a catastrophic problem and is blown far off course ("millions of miles") and cut off until they can make repairs and make it home.

I got to the catastrophe and the early repairs, but could not figure out where to go from there. Maybe I will work more on this in the future sometime.

Writing