Life Spans that Bridge Time

I saw a photo of the SF editor Hugo Gernsback wearing sixties Bell Bottom pants (b. Luxembourg 1884- d. New York 1967). when he was at a science fiction convention con in or around 1967.  A man wearing mod clothes in 1967 that was two years old when composer/pianist Franz Liszt died in 1886. He is known famously or infamously for starting the first Science Fiction (Scientification) magazine AMAZING STORIES back in 1926, which led to other magazines and science fiction writers published within those magazines.

I read in an book by Damon Knight that Hugo Gernsback paid his writers “promptly upon lawsuit.” That is he paid authors for their stories only when he was sued by them.

I have always been interested in timelines of authors and/or composers. Richard Strauss, the famed German composer was born in 1864 and lived all the way to 1949. The great conductor, Arturo Toscanini was born in 1867, circa post Civil War, and lived to 1957 when he used to watch wrestling matches on television in his spare time when he wasn’t conducting the Symphony of the Air. It is hard to imagine he was born one year after the Italian Opera composer Rossini died (b. 1792- d. 1868, composer of “The William Tell Overture” or the Theme from “The Lone Ranger”, if you will) and Toscanini died the year they lauched Sputnik (Oct 4, 1957). 

Toscanini was born 40 years after Beethoven died (b. 1770 - d. 1827), and was 19 years old when Franz Liszt died (b. 1811- d. 1886), who was the first Rock Star of the classical world.

HG Wells was born in 1866 and lived to see the Atomic Bombs used on Japan and he died the next year in 1946.This is obviously a blog listing about not much at all, but I think about things like this once in a while.  

I always wonder what would have happened if HPL had lived past the late 30’s all the way to say, 1970 or even 1980 so. I guess he would have been seen at conventions wearing bell bottoms as well.