rocketman n.
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1931 Salt Lake Tribune 10 Aug. 6/6
Mars, Venus and Jupiter had been visited by Rocket men… Amazing things were learned by Rocket men who went to Venus.
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1931
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Edmond Hamilton
bibliography
Space-struck, both of them…. But I never heard of even a nutty rocket-man who would monkey with a comet!
Creatures of the Comet in Weird Tales Dec. 632/1 -
1938
Manly Wade Wellman
bibliography
In ship No. Fifty-one, half-way from Moon to Mars, four stubbled faces turned to a common, grinning regard as the pounding roar of the rockets died away at last. The skipper, the rocketman, the navigator, the spacehand.
Men Against Stars in Astounding Science-Fiction June 8/1
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1949
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L. Ron Hubbard
To see Earth and the Moon grow small, to behold the Sun dwindling to an unimpressive star, is an experience which has unnerved many a hardy rocket man.
Unwilling Hero in Startling Stories July 102/2
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1959
Robert A. Heinlein
He held a torcher’s contempt for the vast distance itself. Older pilots thought of interplanetary trips with a rocketman’s bias in terms of years—trips that a torch ship with steady acceleration covered in days.
Menace From Earth (1968) 115
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1964 Galaxy Magazine Oct. 181/1
I was a Rocketman 3/c on the Moon, guarding the Aristarchus base against invaders from outer space.
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1992
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Victor Koman
bibliography
Joe Wenders, furloughed rocketman, sat on his couch…and started at the photographs on his wall. Earthrise over the Moon. Ed White taking a space walk a few years before his death in Apollo 1.
Bootstrap Enterprise in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Feb. 57
Research requirements
antedating 1931
Earliest cite
Salt Lake Tribune
Research History
Fred Galvin submitted two 1949 cites from the same issue of Startling Stories: one from Rene LaFayette's (L. Ron Hubbard pseudonym), 'The Unwilling Hero' for the sense of a rocket pilot, and one for for the sense of a rocketry hobbyist, from "Review of the Science Fiction Fan Publications" by "THE EDITOR".Fred Galvin submitted a cite from a 1958 reprint of Manly Wade Wellman's "Men Against the Stars" which Mike Christie verified in its June 1938 first publication.
The OED found a 1931 cite in a SFnal context in a local newspaper; this is now the earliest use in OED3.
Last modified 2022-03-11 16:43:55
In the compilation of some
entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries
in OED.