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First Buck Rogers, Amazing Stories Aug. 1928 Goes for Record $105,000

Although the iconic Frank R. Paul cover is actually for E.E. Smith's The Skylark of Space, Amazing Stories Aug. 1928 is the debut of Buck Rogers

As the blurb on the title page of the issue explains, "Our cover this month depicts a scene from the first installment in this issue of the story entitled THE SKYLARK OF SPACE, by Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby, in which the scientist, who has discovered a chemical substance for the liberation of intra-atomic energy, is making his initial tests, preparatory to his interstellar flight by means of this liberated energy, which makes possible his interstellar space-flyer." When I began my long sleep, man had just begun his real conquest of the air in a sudden series of trans-oceanic flights in airplanes driven by internal combustion motors. This issue features the first appearance of Buck Rogers in "Armageddon 2419" by Phillip Frances Nowlan, as well as the first published story by E. E. "Doc" Smith, a prolific sci-fi writer often called "the father of space opera".

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