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John Cheng, “Astounding Wounder: Imagining Science and Science Fiction in Interwar America” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012)
John Cheng, “Astounding Wounder: Imagining Science and Science Fiction in Interwar America” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012)
ratings:
Length:
77 minutes
Released:
Jun 1, 2012
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
John Cheng‘s new book Astounding Wonder: Imagining Science and Science Fiction in Interwar America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012) uncovers the material and social circumstances that created the social phenomenon of American science fiction. To a population already enamored with the products of scientific research (aviation, automobiles and movies, for example), science fiction magazines offered opportunities for exploring science’s transformative potential, for re-imagining the boundaries of the social and the natural, and, importantly, for building communities. Cheng shows how science fiction readers consumed, produced, argued over and tried to integrate science fiction into their lives: some inspired to devote their lives to science, some inspired to write the Science Fiction Internationale. Historiographically sensitive, Cheng argues for detaching popular culture, and fan culture in particular, from a strong identification with consumption and for the importance of reading texts in their material contexts, while at the same time providing a sophisticated reading of the content of science fiction pulps. Cheng shows how stories about robots, aliens and time travel all reveal Americans’ concerns as science became integrated into American society demonstrating the need for the history of American science to be integrated with American history.
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Released:
Jun 1, 2012
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Andre Williams, “Dividing Lines: Social Class Anxiety and Postbellum Black Fiction” (University of Michigan, 2013): Andrei Williams‘ provocative new book on African American class divisions in Post-Reconstruction and Jim Crow America is sure to spark spirited debate among those interested in how the interplay of economic status and racial identity influence what has... by New Books in Literary Studies