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Title:
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Astounding wonder : imagining science and science fiction in interwar America /
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Authors:
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John Cheng, Author
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Material Type:
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book
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Publisher:
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[S.l.] : University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012
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ISBN / ISSN / EAN :
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978-0-8122-2293-7
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Format:
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392 p. / ill. / 24 cm
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Bibliography note:
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Includes bibliographical references (p. [317]-374) and index
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Languages:
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English
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Class number:
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PS374.S35
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Subjects:
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Literature and science--United States
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Science fiction, American--History and criticism
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Science in popular culture--United States
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Description:
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"Astounding Wonder explores science fiction's emergence in the era's "pulps," colorful magazines that shouted from the newsstands, attracting an extraordinarily loyal and active audience. Pulps invited readers not only to read science fiction but also to participate in it, joining writers and editors in celebrating a collective wonder for and investment in the potential of science. But in conjuring fantastic machines, travel across time and space, unexplored worlds, and alien foes, science fiction offered more than rousing adventure and romance. It also assuaged contemporary concerns about nation, gender, race, authority, ability, and progress--about the place of ordinary individuals within modern science and society - in the process freeing readers to debate scientific theories and implications separate from such concerns. Readers similarly sought to establish their worth and place outside the pulps. Organizing clubs and conventions and producing their own magazines, some expanded science fiction's community and created a fan subculture separate from the professional pulp industry. Others formed societies to launch and experiment with rockets. From debating relativity and the use of slang in the future to printing purple fanzines and calculating the speed of spaceships, fans' enthusiastic industry revealed the tensions between popular science and modern science. Even as it inspired readers' imagination and activities, science fiction's participatory ethos sparked debates about amateurs and professionals that divided the worlds of science fiction in the 1930s and after."--Pub. desc
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Contents note:
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"Magazines for morons": pulp magazines and the emergence of science fiction -- Conversations from the "backyard": reading and imaging community -- Discovering the freedom of facts: fact, fiction, and authority of science -- Involving adventure, reassuring romance: engendering science fiction's domestic tranquility -- Human martians and Asian aliens: the racial nature of wondrous worlds -- The progress of time: Einstein, history, and the dimensions of time travel -- "Fandom is just a goddam hobby": the industry of fans and professionals -- "We want to play with spaceships": popular rocket science in action
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Format :
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In print
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Permalink:
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https://isulibrary.isunet.edu/index.php?lvl=notice_display&id=9299
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