o who is culturally literate as regards SF? Know anything about ray guns? Be they metal, plastic, sparking, squirting, smoking, bubbling or popping, ray guns are quintessential SF. To know nothing of their glorious, quirky shapes is to be not only illiterate, but deprived.
Leslie Singer will change that. He's written a slick, shiny primer, boldly illustrated with famous and obscure treasures, photographed at near-full-size. The introduction is brief: a few words recounting a near-universal SF childhood of zapping and blasting. Then it's right into the deco splendor of the Buck Rogers Rocket Pistol.
Singer doesn't go into much detail; in fact, there's just about as much text in the introduction and on the book jacket as there is in the book entire. The essentials are there, though, like the price guide and the bibliography. He respectfully, lovingly, lets the photographs wax eloquent. Just why is the Hubley Atomic Disintegrator so darn beautiful? Well, just look at it-- sleek, red, ready for action. The Smoke Ring Gun--yep, it really blew smoke rings. Way cool.
Some ephemera are depicted as well--spaceman key chains, futuristic walkie-talkies--but these are only adjunct lessons. The real catechism is the cavalcade of forms: slim shafts, pot-bellied barrels, stubby nozzles, backswept phalanges, crisp triggers, ribbed handles. The timeline runs through Buck Rogers, Tom Corbett, Flash Gordon, Star Trek and Han Solo. And although the earlier, metal forms are stunning, this book proves, ipso facto, that plastic is not a second-class medium, and water pistols are a neglected art form.
The toys speak for themselves
This book is no treatise on ray gun history. It doesn't convey a plethora of interesting tidbits (like the fact that metal ray guns from the '30s and '40s are relatively rare because most of them were collected in metal scrap drives during World War II). Though standard information accompanies each entry--date, location and company of manufacture, as well as its popping, sparking or smoking properties--the book is a simple, vibrant panegyric. The toys speak for themselves, visually.
No doubt the bulk of this book's success (and it succeeds wildly) is in its fabulous illustrations. These wonderful photographs simultaneously provoke awe at a vision of a mint Hubley Atomic Disintegrator, and wonder at the tableau of an entirely decimated Buck Rogers XZ-38, so utterly destroyed that it looks rather like an enigmatic artifact from some archeological dig. Unceasing thanks to photographer Dixie Knight, who knows how to turn scratches and nicks into battle scars nobly won, and who presents plastic like an exotic, vast continuum of clear jewel-tones and chic matte finishes.
This book is simply excellent: its entries are fabulously photographed, its pages adroitly designed. Frankly, the individual who is not moved in the slightest by these lyrical forms is a heartless b*stard. Toy dealers should love this book, for undoubtedly it will transform those previously unfamiliar with the ray gun into instant, adoring collectors. And it wouldn't hurt manufacturers to peruse it either; Playmates could learn a thing or two from Daisy Manufacturing.
