Welcome to Mars Politics, Pop Culture, and Weird Science in 1950s America

by Hollings, Ken; Davis, Erik

• ISBN13: 9781583947616
• ISBN10: 1583947612
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2014-03-18
• Publisher: North Atlantic Books

Summary

Welcome to Mars is a captivating look at the culture of postwar America and its dream of limitless technological and human development. Utilizing declassified government archives, newspaper records, ad campaigns, and B-movies of the period, Hollings weaves an intricate web of Cold War politics, UFO scares, psychedelic research, and 1950s pop culture. From the atom bomb and suburban planning to the space race and little-green-men movies, Welcome to Mars shows the startling connections between science fact and science fiction, a feedback loop in which real technological advances and government experimentation gave rise to science fiction fantasy, which then fed new innovation and research.

Table of Contents
Introduction: Scenes From A History As Yet Unwritten
Chapter 1--1947: Rebuilding Lemuria
Chapter 2--1948: Flying Saucers Over America
Chapter 3--1949: Behaviour Modification
Chapter 4--1950: Cheapness And Splendour
Chapter 5--1951: Absolute Elsewhere
Chapter 6--1952: Red Planet
Chapter 7--1953: Other Tongues, Other Flesh
Chapter 8--1954: Meet The Monsters
Chapter 9--1955: Popular Mechanics
Chapter 10--1956: 'Greetings, My Friend!'
Chapter 11--1957: Contact With Space
Chapter 12--1958: Mass Hysteria
Chapter 13--1959: Teenagers From Outer Space
Conclusion: Thinking the Unthinkable
Bibliography
Index
List of Illustrations

Author Biography

KEN HOLLINGS is a writer based in London. His work appears in a wide range of journals and publications, including The Wire, Sight and Sound, Strange Attractor, Frieze, Blast, and Nude, and in the anthologies The Last Sex, Digital Delirium, Undercurrents, London Noir and Krautrock. His novel Destroy All Monsters was hailed by The Scotsman as "a mighty slab of trippy, cult, out-there fiction, mind-bending reading." He has written and presented critically acclaimed programmes for BBC Radio 3, Radio 4, Resonance FM, NPS in Holland, and ABC Australia. His newest book, The Bright Labyrinth, will appear in 2013. Foreword writer ERIK DAVIS is the author of Techgnosis: Myth, Magic and Mysticism in the Age of Information and has written widely on counterculture, esotericism, and music. The author lives in London, England.