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Monsters, Mushroom Clouds, and the Cold War American Science Fiction and the Roots of Postmodernism, 1946-1964
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M. Keith Booker
Book Code: GM1873
ISBN: 0-313-31873-5
ISBN-13: 978-0-313-31873-3
208 pages
Greenwood Press
Publication: 5/30/2001
List Price: $110.95 (UK Sterling Price: £65.00)
Availability: In Stock
Media Type: Hardcover
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects: Reviews:
  • The bibliographies of books and films are especially valuable....Highly recommended as a provocative examination of the interplay between creativity and cultural pressures, this title will stimulate other such discussions. All collections.
    —Choice     December 2001
  • This is a book to appeal to the scholar of science fiction, the social historian, the movie nut, the student of popular culture-- and anyone else with an eye on why we do what we do, and how it shows up in our art. Highly recommended....
    —Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts     Winter 2004
  • [M]onsters should be ordered for libraries and studied by those interested in SF of the post-World War 2 period and the significance of that SF for utopian studies....This is a coherent, generally well-written collection, arranged to offer a collective argument about tje role, or sometimes lack of role, of docters and medicine in SF.
    —Utopian Studies     2004
  • [a]n impressive, enjoyable book, and one that makes valuable contributions to the history of American science fiction and to our understanding of the culture of the American 1950s. We should be grateful not only to Booker but also--and yet again!--to the much under-appreciated publishers of the Greenwood Press, whose long-time support of sf criticism is as admirable as it is generally unsung.
    —Science Fiction Studies     2002
Description: The 1950s are widely regarded as the golden age of American science fiction. This book surveys a wide range of major science fiction novels and films from the long 1950s--the period from 1946 to 1964--when the tensions of the Cold War were at their peak. The American science fiction novels and films of this period clearly reflect Cold War anxieties and tensions through their focus on such themes as alien invasion and nuclear holocaust. In this sense, they resemble the observations of social and cultural critics during the same period. Meanwhile, American science fiction of the long 1950s also engages its historical and political contexts through an interrogation of phenomena, such as alienation and routinization, that can be seen as consequences of the development of American capitalism during this period. This economic trend is part of the rise of the global phenomenon that Marxist theorists have called "late capitalism." Thus, American science fiction during this period reflects the rise of late capitalism and participates in the beginnings of postmodernism, described by Frederic Jameson as the "cultural logic of late capitalism."
Table of Contents:
  • Introduction
  • Politics in the American Science-Fiction Novel, 1946-1964: Science Fiction as Social Criticism
  • The Beginning or the End?: Post-Holocaust Novels and Films, 1946-1964
  • We're There and They're Here!: Space Exploration and Alien Invasion Films of the Long 1950s
  • The Creature from the Cold War: Science-Fiction Monster Movies of the Long 1950s
  • References
  • Index
LC Card Number: 00-069148
LCC Class: PS374
Dewey Class: 813
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