Cheng, John (Author)
When physicist Robert Goddard, whose career was inspired by H. G. Wells's War of the Worlds, published "A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes," the response was electric. Newspaper headlines across the country announced, "Modern Jules Verne Invents Rocket to Reach Moon," while people from around the world, including two World War I pilots, volunteered as pioneers in space exploration. Though premature (Goddard's rocket, alas, was only imagined), the episode demonstrated not only science's general popularity but also its intersection with interwar popular and commercial culture. In that intersection, the stories that inspired Goddard and others became a recognizable genre: science fiction. 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.
...MoreReview Compora, Daniel P. (2013) Review of "Astounding Wonder: Imagining Science and Science Fiction in Interwar America". Journal of American Culture (p. 138).
Article
Griswold, Robert L.;
(2012)
“Russian Blonde in Space”: Soviet Women in the American Imagination, 1950--1965
(/isis/citation/CBB001320683/)
Article
Volland, Nicolai;
(2014)
Comment on “Let's Go to the Moon”
(/isis/citation/CBB001214667/)
Article
Zur, Dafna;
(2014)
Let's Go to the Moon: Science Fiction in the North Korean Children's Magazine Adong Munhak, 1956--1965
(/isis/citation/CBB001214666/)
Book
Neufeld, Michael J.;
(2013)
Spacefarers: Images of Astronauts and Cosmonauts in the Heroic Era of Spaceflight
(/isis/citation/CBB001201283/)
Chapter
Syon, G. de;
(2012)
Balloons on the Moon: Visions of Space Travel in Francophone Comic Strips
(/isis/citation/CBB001253107/)
Chapter
Syon, Guillaume de;
(2013)
Astronauts and Cosmonauts into Frenchmen: Understanding Space Travel through the Popular Weekly Paris Match
(/isis/citation/CBB001201397/)
Book
Page, Michael R.;
(2012)
The Literary Imagination from Erasmus Darwin to H.G. Wells: Science, Evolution, and Ecology
(/isis/citation/CBB001320100/)
Article
Jim Endersby;
(2016)
Deceived by Orchids: Sex, Science, Fiction and Darwin
(/isis/citation/CBB385205511/)
Book
Goddard, Robert Hutchings;
(2002)
Rockets: Two Classic Papers
(/isis/citation/CBB000302074/)
Book
Rod Pyle;
(2017)
Amazing Stories of the Space Age: True Tales of Nazis in Orbit, Soldiers on the Moon, Orphaned Martian Robots, and Other Fascinating Accounts from the Annals of Spaceflight
(/isis/citation/CBB829510399/)
Book
Johnson-Freese, Joan;
(2009)
Heavenly Ambitions: America's Quest to Dominate Space
(/isis/citation/CBB001032643/)
Thesis
Matthew S. Kitchens;
(2021)
The First Space Race, 1914-1933: How the Press Shaped Spaceflight
(/isis/citation/CBB088643245/)
Article
Siddiqi, Asif A.;
(2004)
Deep Impact: Robert Goddard and the Soviet “Space Fad” of the 1920s.
(/isis/citation/CBB000750387/)
Book
David N. Spires;
(2021)
Assured Access: A History of the United States Air Force Space Launch Enterprise, 1945-2020
(/isis/citation/CBB078667094/)
Book
Ciancone, Michael L.;
(2010)
History of Rocketry and Astronautics: Proceedings of the Thirty-Sixth History Symposium of the International Academy of Astronautics: Houston, Texas, U.S.A., 2002
(/isis/citation/CBB001232444/)
Book
Collins, Martin J.;
(2007)
After Sputnik: 50 Years of the Space Age
(/isis/citation/CBB001032663/)
Thesis
Patrice R. Green;
(2019)
For the Common Man: An Analysis of the United States Space and Rocket Center
(/isis/citation/CBB930817598/)
Chapter
Dick, S. J.;
(2012)
Space, Time and Aliens: The Role of Imagination in Outer Space
(/isis/citation/CBB001253100/)
Article
Schwartz, Matthias;
(2013)
How Nauchnaia Fantastika Was Made: The Debates about the Genre of Science Fiction from NEP to High Stalinism
(/isis/citation/CBB001201410/)
Book
Will Tattersdill;
(2016)
Science, Fiction, and the Fin-de-Siècle Periodical Press
(/isis/citation/CBB727795187/)
Be the first to comment!