And he had that awesome friendship/team-up with Warlock! 

"Byrne always struck me as a guy who would rather play with other's toys sooner than create his own."

I don't remember those specifically, but they sound like quintessential '80s sci fi / fantasy.  It was later than '83, but I loved, loved, loved Stephen Billias' book The American Book of the Dead.  Anyone remember that one?

I remember my parents and grandparents reading some of them.  I can't say I was ever tempted.

No comments about Rudy Rucker?  I'm not an authority on him (I'm afraid I've never even heard of The Sex Sphere), but I loved Master of Space and Time, and even his lesser books usually have some intriguing ideas at their core.  Brilliant, but a little crazy.

The first couple of Xanth books might hold up (I haven't gone back to reread them); the concept—everyone has a single magical ability—was a fairly fresh idea at the time.  But I must have read at least fourteen or fifteen of them before (pick one or more of the following) I aged out/burned out/the books declined in…

I don't think I've read any of these, actually, but my wife still has her copy of Spellsinger, as it was one of her favorites in middle school.  I guess I could read it, but for some reason I could never get into Foster, and I'm probably too old to appreciate it now.

That's it!  Thank you!

That's it!  Thank you!

Now that you mention it, Howard the Duck was the subject of legal action brought by Disney, who at the time felt Howard was too similar to Donald. One of Gerber's issues with Marvel was that they bent over backwards to accommodate Disney (agreeing, for example, to put pants on Howard) instead of arguing that Howard…

Or Hector Berlioz's Memoirs. Wonderfully entertaining and completely unreliable.

I like Lynda Barry's concept of "autobifictionography:" you tell the story the way it should have gone, like if you had said that one perfect thing to make a point that, in reality, you actually thought of the next day.

I don't know if you're referring to me, but I don't hate P & F. I just lost interest in it.

Oh brother.

Well, it happened in England, you see.

Oh, college professor was her fallback.  I should have watched that, I love science fiction.

I'm surprised no one in this thread has mentioned the ultimate point of comparison for Fry, Arthur Dent. Of course Fry is uninteresting on his own, he is the audience surrogate: we see the strangeness of the future from his point of view. If the visitor from the 20th century were competent, heroic, and charismatic…

". . . and everything has cilantro on it . . . "

The robot Lucy Liu cracks me up in that episode, though: "Wow, Fry, I really like how you NOTICE TWO THINGS."

The theme song is great and it has some hilarious moments (Fry, needing an excuse to leave the Mayor's office: "I don't want to live anymore!"), but on the rewatch I was surprised how unfunny it is a good deal of the time.