Movies, Modernism, and the Science Fiction Pulps

What impact did the new art of film have on the development of another new art, the emerging science fiction genre, during the pre- and early post-World War II era? Focusing on such popular pulp magazines as Amazing Stories, Astounding Stories, and Wonder Stories, this book traces this early relationship between film and literature through four common features: stories that involve film or the film industry; film-related advertising; editorial matters and readers' letters commenting on film; and the magazines' heralded cover and story illustrations. By surveying these haunting traces of another medium in early science fiction discourse, we can begin to see the key role that a cinematic mindedness played in this formative era and to expand the early history of science fiction as a cultural idea beyond the usual boundaries that have been staked out by its literary manifestations and the genre's historians.

J. P. Telotte is a professor of film and media studies at Georgia Institute of Technology where he teaches courses in animation, science fiction, film history, and film genres. Co-editor of the journal Post Script, he has published widely on film and television with a special emphasis on science fiction media. His recent publications include Science Fiction TV (2014), Science Fiction Double Feature (edited with Gerald Duchovnay2015), Robot Ecology and the Science Fiction Film (2016), and Animating the Science Fiction Imagination (Oxford 2017).

Chapter 1: Introduction: Science Fiction's "Composite" Project
Chapter 2: The Pulps in the Consumer's Republic
Chapter 3: The Real Thing: The Pulps Imagine Film
Chapter 4: Convergence and the Rhetoric of Scientifilm
Chapter 5: Cover Stories: Visualizing Film
Chapter 6: Of War and Beyond

Select Filmography of Early

Bibliography

Index