Smokin' Rockets: The Romance of Technology in American Film, Radio and Television, 1945-62

Luciano, Patrick, and Gary Coville. Smokin' Rockets: The Romance of Technology in American Film, Radio and Television, 1945-62. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002.

Reviewed by Richard D. Erlich, "Botched Job on SF in US Media, 1932-62" (editor's title?), Science Fiction Studies #90 = 30.2 (July 2003): 326 f.[1]

According to Erlich, Rockets offers "an Introduction, seven chapters surveying Hugo Gernsback in the early years of the twentieth century through Ziv Television’s Men Into Space in 1959; an Epilogue on the 1960s as mostly “an unfortunate footnote to the story that went before it” (Luciano and Coville, p. 195); an annotated Appendix of selected radio and television shows, including some excellent ones; a lightly-annotated Select Filmography; a Bibliography; and an Index" (Erlich p. 326). Useful on "Jacob Bronowski on the public’s suspicion of science," during the period and "'the conflict between science and the public' through examination of 'the popular entertainment of the 1950s' (here 1945 to 1965). The conflict is mediated by domesticated technology [...]" such as refrigerators and television sets. Rockets gives a quick survey of atomic science, ending with "Heinz Haber’s work for Disney Corporation on “Our Friend the Atom,” January 23, 1957 (a discussion useful for students of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven [1971], with its villain, Dr. William Haber)" (Erlich 327).

Other works of interest here covered in Rockets include Flash Gordon, Orson Welles's "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast, THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL as film and radio adaptation, Arch Obler's THE TWONKY (theatrical film), and Fritz Lang's earlier and German — but influential — film METROPOLIS.

RDE, Initial Compiler, 17July19