A brilliant tour through the iconography and literature of America’s grandest corporate dreamtime, the Space Age.
— William Gibson
The late 1950s and early ’60s were the golden age of science fiction, an era when the farthest reaches of imagination were fed by the technological breakthroughs of the postwar years. While science fiction writers expressed the dreams and nightmares of the era in pulp print, real-life rocket engineers worked on making space travel reality. The imaginations of many Cold War scientists were fed by science fiction literature, and companies often promoted their future capabilities with fantastical, colorful visions aimed at luring young engineers into their booming workforce. In between the dry articles of trade journals, a new visual vernacular sprang up. Aerospace industry ads pitched the idea that we lived in a moment where anything was possible — gravity was history, and soon so would be the confines of our solar system. Another Science Fiction presents nearly 200 entertaining, intriguing, inspiring, and mind-boggling pieces of space-age eye candy.
Press
- The New York Times feature profile of the research
- Review in The Space Review by Eve Lichtgarn
- Wired Science in-depth interview by Alexis Madrigal
- Review in The Oregonian by Jeff Baker
- Review in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction by Charles deLint
- Review in USA Today by Dan Vergano
- Review in The San Francisco Bay Guardian by Johnny Ray Huston
Broadcast Media
- The John Batchelor Show on WABC New York, March 5, 2011 show, 12 midnight hour
- The Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC
- The Space Show with Dr. David Livingston
- Too Much Information with Benjamen Walker on WFMU
- A little spot on CBS Up-to-the-Minute with Michelle Gielan
Print only reviews:
- Discover, May 2010
- Harper’s, June 2010
- SciFi, August 2010
- Quest: The History of Spaceflight Quarterly, November 2010
Web Extras:
- I went to Kennedy Space Center in July, 2011 for the launch of STS-135 as a member of the NASA Tweetup team. Time Magazine featured me in a webisode about the launch.
- Blog post about the Los Alamos artwork and the NERVA rocket project, with a bit more detail than appeared in the book.
- November 2011 in-depth author interview in my city neighborhood newspaper.
- Blog post on early space planes for Dvice, written on the occasion of the launch of STS-135.
- My Google Authors Talk, August 16, 2011
- View my small collection of space-themed license plates on Flickr
- Remarks on Yuri’s Day, April 12, 2011 in the Atlantic Tech
- Blog post about a complaint by a person who, back in 1959, absolutely hated the ads that would become ASF