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Author: John Cheng
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812206673
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402
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Book Description
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.
Author: John Cheng
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812206673
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402
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Book Description
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.
Author: John Cheng
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literature and science
Languages : en
Pages : 840
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Book Description
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Science fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 504
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Book Description
Author: Everett Franklin Bleiler
Publisher: Kent State University Press
ISBN: 9780873386043
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 780
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Book Description
Complementing Science-Fiction: The Early Years, which surveys science-fiction published in book form from its beginnings through 1930, the present volume covers all the science-fiction printed in the genre magazines--Amazing, Astounding, and Wonder, along with offshoots and minor magazines--from 1926 through 1936. This is the first time this historically important literary phenomenon, which stands behind the enormous modern development of science-fiction, has been studied thoroughly and accurately. The heart of the book is a series of descriptions of all 1,835 stories published during this period, plus bibliographic information. Supplementing this are many useful features: detailed histories of each of the magazines, an issue by issue roster of contents, a technical analysis of the art work, brief authors' biographies, poetry and letter indexes, a theme and motif index of approximately 30,0000 entries, and general indexes. Science-Fiction: The Gernsback Years is not only indispensable for reference librarians, collectors, readers, and scholars interested in science-fiction, it is also of importance to the study of popular culture during the Great Depression in the United States. Most of its data, which are largely based on rare and almost unobtainable sources, are not available elsewhere.
Author: Alisa Solomon
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0805095292
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 484
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Book Description
A sparkling and eye-opening history of the Broadway musical that changed the world In the half-century since its premiere, Fiddler on the Roof has had an astonishing global impact. Beloved by audiences the world over, performed from rural high schools to grand state theaters, Fiddler is a supremely potent cultural landmark. In a history as captivating as its subject, award-winning drama critic Alisa Solomon traces how and why the story of Tevye the milkman, the creation of the great Yiddish writer Sholem-Aleichem, was reborn as blockbuster entertainment and a cultural touchstone, not only for Jews and not only in America. It is a story of the theater, following Tevye from his humble appearance on the New York Yiddish stage, through his adoption by leftist dramatists as a symbol of oppression, to his Broadway debut in one of the last big book musicals, and his ultimate destination—a major Hollywood picture. Solomon reveals how the show spoke to the deepest conflicts and desires of its time: the fraying of tradition, generational tension, the loss of roots. Audiences everywhere found in Fiddler immediate resonance and a usable past, whether in Warsaw, where it unlocked the taboo subject of Jewish history, or in Tokyo, where the producer asked how Americans could understand a story that is "so Japanese." Rich, entertaining, and original, Wonder of Wonders reveals the surprising and enduring legacy of a show about tradition that itself became a tradition. Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles.
Author: Brian Stableford
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
ISBN: 1434457591
Category : Science fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 214
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Book Description
Well-known critic and novelist Brian Stableford here discusses the writers, editors, and publishers who helped create the modern genre of science fiction: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Camille Flammarion, Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Hugo Gernsback, John W. Campbell Jr., Edward E. "Doc" Smith, Robert A. Heinlein, James Blish, Gregory Benford, and Ian Watson. Complete with bibliography and index.
Author: Micha Archer
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593109643
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 34
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Book Description
A Caldecott Honor winner! Micha Archer's gorgeous, detailed collages give readers a fresh outlook on the splendors of nature. Cover may vary. When two curious kids embark on a "wonder walk," they let their imaginations soar as they look at the world in a whole new light. They have thought-provoking questions for everything they see: Is the sun the world's light bulb? Is dirt the world's skin? Are rivers the earth's veins? Is the wind the world breathing? I wonder . . . Young readers will wonder too, as they ponder these gorgeous pages and make all kinds of new connections. What a wonderful world indeed!
Author: Michael Ashley
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 9780853238553
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 316
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Book Description
This is the first of three volumes that chart the history of the science fiction magazine from the earliest days to the present. This first volume looks at the exuberant years of the pulp magazines. It traces the growth and development of the science fiction magazines from when Hugo Gernsback launched the very first, Amazing Stories, in 1926 through to the birth of the atomic age and the death of the pulps in the early 1950s. These were the days of the youth of science fiction, when it was brash, raw and exciting: the days of the first great space operas by Edward Elmer Smith and Edmond Hamilton, through the cosmic thought variants by Murray Leinster, Jack Williamson and others to the early 1940s when John W. Campbell at Astounding did his best to nurture the infant genre into adulthood. Under him such major names as Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, A. E. van Vogt and Theodore Sturgeon emerged who, along with other such new talents as Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke, helped create modern science fiction. For over forty years magazines were at the heart of science fiction and this book considers how the magazines, and their publishers, editors and authors influenced the growth and perception of this fascinating genre.
Author: Alec Nevala-Lee
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062571966
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 619
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Book Description
Hugo and Locus Award Finalist An Economist Best Book of the Year A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Best Book of 2018 “An amazing and engrossing history...Insightful, entertaining, and compulsively readable.” — George R. R. Martin Astounding is the landmark account of the extraordinary partnership between four controversial writers—John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and L. Ron Hubbard—who set off a revolution in science fiction and forever changed our world. This remarkable cultural narrative centers on the figure of John W. Campbell, Jr., whom Asimov called “the most powerful force in science fiction ever.” Campbell, who has never been the subject of a biography until now, was both a visionary author—he wrote the story that was later filmed as The Thing—and the editor of the groundbreaking magazine best known as Astounding Science Fiction, in which he discovered countless legendary writers and published classic works ranging from the I, Robot series to Dune. Over a period of more than thirty years, from the rise of the pulps to the debut of Star Trek, he dominated the genre, and his three closest collaborators reached unimaginable heights. Asimov became the most prolific author in American history; Heinlein emerged as the leading science fiction writer of his generation with the novels Starship Troopers and Stranger in a Strange Land; and Hubbard achieved lasting fame—and infamy—as the founder of the Church of Scientology. Drawing on unexplored archives, thousands of unpublished letters, and dozens of interviews, Alec Nevala-Lee offers a riveting portrait of this circle of authors, their work, and their tumultuous private lives. With unprecedented scope, drama, and detail, Astounding describes how fan culture was born in the depths of the Great Depression; follows these four friends and rivals through World War II and the dawn of the atomic era; and honors such exceptional women as Doña Campbell and Leslyn Heinlein, whose pivotal roles in the history of the genre have gone largely unacknowledged. For the first time, it reveals the startling extent of Campbell’s influence on the ideas that evolved into Scientology, which prompted Asimov to observe: “I knew Campbell and I knew Hubbard, and no movement can have two Messiahs.” It looks unsparingly at the tragic final act that estranged the others from Campbell, bringing the golden age of science fiction to a close, and it illuminates how their complicated legacy continues to shape the imaginations of millions and our vision of the future itself. "Enthralling…A clarion call to enlarge American literary history.” — Washington Post “Engrossing, well-researched… This sure-footed history addresses important issues, such as the lack of racial diversity and gender parity for much of the genre’s history.” — Wall Street Journal “A gift to science fiction fans everywhere.” — Sylvia Nasar, New York Times bestselling author of A Beautiful Mind
Author: Orty Ortwein
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476686300
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 245
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Book Description
The writer Ray Bradbury, science fiction expert Forry Ackerman, and special effects genius Ray Harryhausen are world-famous for their careers involving tales of the imagination. Before anyone had heard of them, they were friends as teens and college-aged boys enjoying all that 1930s L.A. had to offer: getting celebrity autographs, watching blockbuster movies, and haunting dozens of bookstores. As members of the Los Angeles chapter of the Science Fiction League, the three belonged to a tight-knit group that was involved in the earliest science fiction conventions and the birth of cosplay. This book follows the lives and careers of these three literary and film legends and tracks the origins of science fiction fandom. Each chapter builds a chronology of how their paths intertwined, and ultimately connected to, the beginnings of renowned fan conventions like Comic-Con. Devoted science fiction fans and new readers alike will learn how a young friendship launched three illustrious careers and changed the face of science fiction forever.
