Rumors of War and Infernal Machines Technomilitary Agenda-setting in American and British Speculative Fiction

by Gannon, Charles E.

• ISBN13: 9780742540347
• ISBN10: 0742540340
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-08-11
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Summary

This provocative and unique work reveals the remarkably influential role of futuristic literature on contemporary political power in America. Tracing this phenomenon from its roots in Victorian Britain, Rumors of War and Infernal Machines offers a fascinating exploration of how fictional speculations on emergent or imaginary military technologies profoundly influence the political agendas and actions of modern superpower states. Gannon convincingly demonstrates that military fiction anticipated and even influenced the evolution of the tank, the development of the airplane, and also the bitter political battles within Britain's War Office and the Admiralty. In the United States, future-fictions and Cold War thrillers were an officially acknowledged factor in the Pentagon's research and development agendas, and often gave rise-and shape-to the R&D agendas that engendered technologies as diverse as automation, atomic weaponry, aerospace vehicles, and the Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars"). Gannon's book uncovers a striking relationship between the increasing political influence of speculative military fiction and the parallel rise of superpower states and their technocentric ideologies. With its detailed political, historical, and literary analysis of the American and European fascination with hi-tech warfare, this lively and informative study will appeal to students, general readers, literary and cultural scholars, and military and history enthusiasts alike. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Charles E. Gannon is associate professor of English at St. Bonaventure University

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	viii
Introduction: Assessing Rumors---of War and Infernal Machines	1	(7)
Armageddon by Gaslight: Victorian Visions of Apocalypse	8	(24)
Opportunistic Anticipations and Accidental Insights: William Le Queux's Exploitation of Edwardian Invasion Anxieties	32	(30)
Promoters of the Probable, Prophets of the Possible: Technological Innovation and Edwardian Near-Future War Fiction	62	(29)
H.G. Wells: The Far-Future War Prophet of Edwardian England	91	(21)
Hard Numbers, Hard Cases, Hard Decisions: Politics and Future-War Fiction in America	112	(16)
An Imperfect Future Tense(d): Anticipations of Atomic Annihilation in Post-War American Science Ficition	128	(18)
Nuclear Fiction and Silo Psychosis: Narratives of Life in the Shadow of a Mushroom Cloud	146	(27)
Radio Waves, Death Rays, and Transgressive (Sub)Texts: Future-War Fiction in the Wide Black Yonder	173	(35)
Making Man-Machines of Mass Destruction: Future-War Authors as Seers in an Age of Cyborg Soldiers	208	(31)
Cultural Casualties as Collateral Damage: The Fragment-ingation Effects of Future-War Fantasies vs. Fictions	239	(17)
Afterword: On Conducting a Literary Reconnaissance in Force---and in Earnest	256	(3)
Notes	259	(28)
Bibliography	287	(5)
Index	292

Excerpts

"This provocative and unique work reveals the influential role of futuristic literature on contemporary political power in America. Tracing this phenomenon from its roots in Victorian Britain, Rumors of War and Infernal Machines offers an exploration of how fictional speculations on emergent or imaginary military technologies profoundly influence the political agendas and actions of modern superpower states. Charles Gannon convincingly demonstrates that military fiction anticipated and even influenced the evolution of the tank, the development of the airplane, and also the bitter political battles within Britain's War Office and the Admiralty. In the United States, future-fictions and Cold War thrillers were an officially acknowledged factor in the Pentagon's research and development agendas, and often gave rise - and shape - to the R&D agendas that engendered technologies as diverse as automation, atomic weaponry, aerospace vehicles, and the Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars"). Gannon's book uncovers a striking relationship between the increasing political influence of speculative military fiction and the parallel rise of superpower states and their technocentric ideologies. With its detailed political, historical, and literary analysis of the American and European fascination with hi-tech warfare, this study will appeal to students, general readers, literary and cultural scholars, and military and history enthusiasts alike."--BOOK JACKET.