American Science Fiction and the Cold War: Literature and Film

by David Seed

Overview

American Science Fiction—in both literature and film—has played a key role in the portrayal of the fears inherent in the Cold War. The end of this era heralds the need for a reassessment of the literary output of the forty-year period since 1945. Working through a series of key texts, American Science Fiction and the Cold War investigates the political inflections put on American narratives in the post-war decades by Cold War cultural circumstances. Nuclear holocaust, Russian invasion, and the perceived rise of totalitarianism in American society are key elements in the author's exploration of science fiction narratives that include Fahrenheit 451, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Dr. Strangelove.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781579581954
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/01/1999
Series:	America in the 20th/21st Century Series
Pages:	222
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

David Seed is Professor of American Literature at the University of Liverpool

Table of Contents

Introduction; Chapter I Postwar Jeremiads: Philip Wylie and Leo Szilard; Chapter II Variations on a Patriotic Theme: Robert A. Heinlein; Chapter III History and Apocalypse in Poul Anderson; Chapter IV Views from the Hearth; Chapter V Cultures of Surveillance; Chapter VI Take-Over Bids: Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth; Chapter VII The Russians Have Come; Chapter VIII Embodying the Arms Race: Bernard Wolfe’s Limbo; Chapter IX The Cold War Computerised; Chapter X Conspiracy Narratives; Chapter XI Absurdist Visions: Dr. Strangelove in Context; Chapter XII The Signs of War: Walter M. Miller and Russel Hoban; Chapter XIII In the Aftermath; Chapter XIV The Star Wars Debate;

Editorial Reviews

★ 04/01/2014
Palmer, the master of medical suspense, captivates readers with his 20th and final stunning thriller. Dr. Lou Welcome, a recovering drug and alcohol addict with extensive experience in emergency medicine, and Cap Duncan, his longtime friend and former AA sponsor, attend a medical conference in Atlanta. While trail running, Cap slips and sustains a compound fracture of his femur. Although he is taken to the hospital, his gash soon becomes infected with a flesh-eating bacteria. Welcome discovers that a terrorist group has unleashed a "Doomsday Germ," which they hoped to contain by infecting individuals they alone selected. However, the bacteria has became more potent—resisting all antibiotics and contaminating numerous patients. Hoping to find a cure, the terrorists kidnap Dr. Nazar Farooq, a noted infectious disease specialist. Meanwhile, Lou meets Humphrey Miller, a self-trained microbiologist who urges Lou to treat the bacteria with a controversial, germ-eating microorganism. VERDICT This exciting, fast-paced thriller culminates a successful writing career for Palmer, who, in October 2013, died unexpectedly at age 71. Palmer drew upon his own extensive expertise in emergency medicine for such best-selling novels as Extreme Measures and The First Patient. [125,000-copy first printing.]—Jerry P. Miller. Cambridge, MA

Booknews

03/17/2014
Members of a secret group founded in the early 1940s, the Society of One Hundred Neighbors, believe that entitlements begun under F.D.R. are dooming the U.S. to bankruptcy and moral decay in the less-than-convincing third Dr. Lou Welcome thriller (after 2013’s Political Suicide) from bestseller Palmer, who died in 2013. Readers soon learn that the society was behind the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993—and that its goal was the “erosion of the public’s confidence in the head of the House Armed Services Committee that would lead to his resignation.” The Neighbors have now set their sights higher. They intend to use a devastating new strain of bacteria completely resistant to any known treatment to extort an end to New Deal policies like Social Security. Saving the world comes down to an unlikely pair of heroes—an FBI agent who survived a shot to the head, and Welcome, who has struggled with alcohol and amphetamine dependence. Characters’ reactions to events are often as unbelievable as the events themselves. 125,000-copy first printing. Agent: Meg Ruley, Jane Rotrosen Agency. (May)

From the Publisher

Genuinely exciting … thoroughly revisionist in its range and preoccupations, adventurous in approach, and offering a radical re-reading of a body of work that has either been neglected entirely or marginalised as lacking serious social engagement … David Seed is unparallelled in both his knowledge of and authority within post-war American science fiction.

Professor Ian Bell