Chapter 1 Introduction: Assessing Rumors—of War and Infernal Machines Chapter 2 Armageddon by Gaslight: Victorian Visions of Apocalypse Chapter 3 Opportunistic Anticipations and Accidental Insights: William Le Queux's Exploitation of Edwardian Invasion Anxieties Chapter 4 Promoters of the Probable, Prophets of the Possible: Technological Innovation and Edwardian Near-Future War Fiction Chapter 5 H.G. Wells: The Far-Future War Prophet of Edwardian England Chapter 6 Hard Numbers, Hard Cases, Hard Decisions: Politics and Future-War Fiction in America Chapter 7 An Imperfect Future Tense(d): Anticipations of Atomic Annihilation in Post-War American Science Fiction Chapter 8 Nuclear Fiction and Silo Psychosis: Narratives of Life in the Shadow of a Mushroom Cloud Chapter 9 Radio Waves, Death Rays, and Transgressive (Sub)Texts: Future-War Fiction in the Wide Black Yonder Chapter 10 Making Man-Machines of Mass Destruction: Future-War Authors as Seers in an Age of Cyborg Soldiers Chapter 11 Cultural Casualties as Collateral Damage: The Fragment-ing/-ation Effects of Future-War Fantasies vs. Fictions Chapter 12 Afterword: On Conducting a Literary Reconnaissance in Force—and in Earnest
Charles E. Gannon is associate professor of English at St. Bonaventure University.
[H]ighly convincing....[A]n interesting read, offering numerous
insights into the cultural influence of science fiction....[T]his
book is a timely study – especially since war is top of the agenda
in current American politics – showing how America is open to both
the progressive nature of speculative texts and the dangerous
imagining of deadly new technologies. We have only to look at the
war in Iraq to see how dangerous our technological imagination can
be.
*Journal of American Studies*
The combination of textual analysis with historical as well as
political facts offers readers a multidimensional approach, as it
enables them to assess the primary texts examined from a literary
as well as socio-cultural perspective. This makes the book a useful
source of reference to anyone interested in transatlantic
superpower politics in relation to science fiction, technothrillers
and apocalypse narratives....Gannon's well-documented endnotes and
epigraphs at the start of every chapter make this book a valuable
resource for the general reader, scholar, undergraduate and
postgraduate student who wishes to explore the point where
technology, politics and future-war literature intersect.
*Symbiosis*
The book investigates an exchange between future-war fiction and
political entities in Victorian and Edwardian Britain and in the
USA through and beyond the Cold War....Gannon skilfully deploys a
range of discursive materials to discuss and analyse fictional
anticipations of a technologically enabled 'Great War....He then
addresses America's rise to superpower status accompanied by
literary imagining of nuclear destruction, death rays, cyborg
soldiers, and starship troopers.
*The Year's Work In English Studies*
Gannon breaks new ground in a superior cultural study,
investigating the influence military science fiction has exerted
over military policy makers….The well-researched military
backgrounds prove the author's thesis that science fiction has
indeed influenced the conclusions of military think tanks. An
essential acquisition for collections of science fiction and
military history. Highly recommended.
*CHOICE*
Emerging from both military history and literary criticism, this
volume traces a remarkable genealogy of speculative fiction's
"truth effects" in Britain and the United States...Gannon sees a
powerful relationship between speculative military fiction and the
rise of "technocentric" ideologies of the modern war state.
*American Literature*
If you are of a mind to tive less credence to the humanities of war
than to the sciences, set that aside long enough to read Rumors of
War. I think you'll be glad you did.
*Analog Science Fiction & Fact*
In , Gannon offers a thorough study of what future-war writers
anticipated.
*Science Fiction Studies*
A fascinating and disturbing subject....The theme, examined in rich
detail, is...that fiction plays its part in shaping and colonizing
the military imagination—perhaps even seeping into the process of
procurement or research and development....Is star wars
fiction conducive to star wars fact?
*Journal Of Technology Studies*
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