Flashback: Taking an Amazing Journey

This early '80s sci-fi jaunt through Nazis, sequel-itis, and racial tensions shows that all of this has happened before and all of this is happening again

When various science fiction magazines showed up in my rural Kentucky mailbox — addressed simply to “Sean Bugg, Rural Route #2” because you don’t need house numbers when there aren’t many houses — I didn’t think of them as long-term objects. Unlike books, which I developed a reverence for early on, magazines were short-term things, not disposable like a newspaper but not something that’s going to sit on a shelf and exude relevance for decades to come.

I hadn’t yet entered my packrat era at fourteen years old. But they stuck around in various boxes and apartments and townhouses until settling here in Falls Church where they made their way onto shelves where I keep my various relics of the past.

When I picked up the subject for this Flashback — the March 1982 issue of Amazing Science Fiction Stories — the cover immediately struck me as unfortunately relevant, what with the Nazis and Hitler and the babe with a machine gun. Ha ha, Nazis, guess we’ve been seeing a lot of those lately! Fine, …