I remember back when we used to honor various worthies by putting them on postage stamps. Sadly, it seems that these days it’s just plants, animals, and inanimate objects that get the honor. I can’t complain about some of the wonderful designs and images we’ve seen lately, but a postage stamp is a quick and easy way to honor someone, and perhaps bring attention to someone we should know more or care more about. A heck of a lot easier to do than putting them on money…..

So here’s a half dozen notables that I think should be honored – and I might even get around to actually nominating them someday.

I’ll wager you’ve never heard of her, but in her day Gertrude Berg was one of the most popular, respected, and admired women in the country. She created, wrote, produced, and starred in The Goldbergs – arguably the very first “family sitcom” – on both radio AND television. As such, she led a media empire of books, columns, and endorsements that would have made Oprah Winfrey proud. And she wasn’t afraid to show off her Jewishness.

As a reminder that “Black History” didn’t end with the killing of Martin Luther King Jr., Don Cornelius was the creator, producer, and host of the dance and music show Soul Train – Black America’s response to American Bandstand – over the course of its run from 1970 to 1993.

Speaking of American Bandstand, how about putting Dick Clark on a stamp? Heck, you could do an entire set or even series of TV Legends. Jackie Gleason! Rod Serling! Walter Cronkite! Mary Tyler Moore! Johnny Carson!

Yes, I am well aware that the first “science fiction” stories come from Europe, going at least as far back as Johannes Kepler’s Somnium (a treatise on how the heavens would look to an observer on the Moon, disguised as a traveler’s tale). And it is of course entirely likely that other cultures around the world had their own early tales of wonder that could be shoehorned into the “Science Fiction” box.

But it was really in America – where an immigrant named Hugo Gernsback realized that all these tales of scientific speculation, space travel, and alien life should be given their own descriptive label – that the genre of Science Fiction was born.

Given that, why aren’t there more honors and recognition of America’s science fiction writers? Especially given how the genre has now become part of the mainstream? Take a look at some of the best movies of the past decade or so: Inception. The Martian. Arrival. Blade Runner 2049. Get Out. Her. The Shape of Water. All critically acclaimed – and all unquestionably science fiction.

So let’s make some stamps featuring some of the greatest American writers of the second half of the 20^th century who had at least one foot planted firmly in SF.

(I’ll wager that anyone can make better stamp designs than these. These crude mockups are just to give you the idea)