Rumors Of War And Infernal Machines

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Rumors of War and Infernal Machines

Charles E. Gannon
Rumors of War and Infernal Machines Book PDF

Author : Charles E. Gannon
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 326 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2005
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0742540359

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Rumors of War and Infernal Machines by Charles E. Gannon Pdf

This provocative and unique work reveals the remarkably influential role of futuristic literature on contemporary political power in America. Tracing this phenomenon from its roots in Victorian Britain, Rumors of War and Infernal Machines offers a fascinating exploration of how fictional speculations on emergent or imaginary military technologies profoundly influence the political agendas and actions of modern superpower states. Gannon convincingly demonstrates that military fiction anticipated and even influenced the evolution of the tank, the development of the airplane, and also the bitter political battles within Britain's War Office and the Admiralty. In the United States, future-fictions and Cold-War thrillers were an officially acknowledged factor in the Pentagon's research and development agendas, and often gave rise_and shape_to the nation's strategic development of technologies as diverse as automation, atomic weaponry, aerospace vehicles, and the Strategic Defense Initiative ('Star Wars'). His book reveals a striking relationship between the increasing political influence of speculative military fiction and the parallel rise of superpower states and their technocentric ideologies. With its detailed political, historical, and literary analysis of U.S. and British fascination with hi-tech warfare, this lively and revealing study will appeal to students, literary and cultural scholars, military and history enthusiasts, and general readers.

Rumors of War and Infernal Machines

Charles E. Gannon
Rumors of War and Infernal Machines Book PDF

Author : Charles E. Gannon
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Page : 324 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2005-08-11
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780742568716

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Rumors of War and Infernal Machines by Charles E. Gannon Pdf

This provocative and unique work reveals the remarkably influential role of futuristic literature on contemporary political power in America. Tracing this phenomenon from its roots in Victorian Britain, Rumors of War and Infernal Machines offers a fascinating exploration of how fictional speculations on emergent or imaginary military technologies profoundly influence the political agendas and actions of modern superpower states. Gannon convincingly demonstrates that military fiction anticipated and even influenced the evolution of the tank, the development of the airplane, and also the bitter political battles within Britain's War Office and the Admiralty. In the United States, future-fictions and Cold-War thrillers were an officially acknowledged factor in the Pentagon's research and development agendas, and often gave rise_and shape_to the nation's strategic development of technologies as diverse as automation, atomic weaponry, aerospace vehicles, and the Strategic Defense Initiative ('Star Wars'). His book reveals a striking relationship between the increasing political influence of speculative military fiction and the parallel rise of superpower states and their technocentric ideologies. With its detailed political, historical, and literary analysis of U.S. and British fascination with hi-tech warfare, this lively and revealing study will appeal to students, literary and cultural scholars, military and history enthusiasts, and general readers.

Divine Art, Infernal Machine

Elizabeth L. Eisenstein
Divine Art Infernal Machine Book PDF

Author : Elizabeth L. Eisenstein
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Page : 384 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2011-01-21
Category : History
ISBN : 9780812204674

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Divine Art, Infernal Machine by Elizabeth L. Eisenstein Pdf

There is a longstanding confusion of Johann Fust, Gutenberg's one-time business partner, with the notorious Doctor Faustus. The association is not surprising to Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, for from its very early days the printing press was viewed by some as black magic. For the most part, however, it was welcomed as a "divine art" by Western churchmen and statesmen. Sixteenth-century Lutherans hailed it for emancipating Germans from papal rule, and seventeenth-century English radicals viewed it as a weapon against bishops and kings. While an early colonial governor of Virginia thanked God for the absence of printing in his colony, a century later, revolutionaries on both sides of the Atlantic paid tribute to Gutenberg for setting in motion an irreversible movement that undermined the rule of priests and kings. Yet scholars continued to praise printing as a peaceful art. They celebrated the advancement of learning while expressing concern about information overload. In Divine Art, Infernal Machine, Eisenstein, author of the hugely influential The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, has written a magisterial and highly readable account of five centuries of ambivalent attitudes toward printing and printers. Once again, she makes a compelling case for the ways in which technological developments and cultural shifts are intimately related. Always keeping an eye on the present, she recalls how, in the nineteenth century, the steam press was seen both as a giant engine of progress and as signaling the end of a golden age. Predictions that the newspaper would supersede the book proved to be false, and Eisenstein is equally skeptical of pronouncements of the supersession of print by the digital. The use of print has always entailed ambivalence about serving the muses as opposed to profiting from the marketing of commodities. Somewhat newer is the tension between the perceived need to preserve an ever-increasing mass of texts against the very real space and resource constraints of bricks-and-mortar libraries. Whatever the multimedia future may hold, Eisenstein notes, our attitudes toward print will never be monolithic. For now, however, reports of its death are greatly exaggerated.

Future Wars

David Seed
Future Wars Book PDF

Author : David Seed
Publisher : Liverpool University Press
Page : 313 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2012-01-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781846317552

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Future Wars by David Seed Pdf

This timely book investigates fiction that speculates about wars likely to break out in the near or distant future. Ranging widely across periods and conflicts real and imagined, Future Wars explores the interplay between politics, literature, science fiction, and war in a range of classic texts. Individual essays look at Reagan's infamous “Star Wars” project, nuclear fiction, Martian invasion, and the Pax Americana. The use of future war scenarios in military planning dates back to the nineteenth century, and Future Wars concludes with a US Army officer's assessment of the continuing usefulness of future wars fiction.

The War of the Worlds

Peter J. Beck
The War of the Worlds Book PDF

Author : Peter J. Beck
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 404 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2016-08-25
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781474229890

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The War of the Worlds by Peter J. Beck Pdf

First published in 1897, H.G. Wells's alien invasion narrative The War of the Worlds was a landmark work of science fiction and one that continues to be adapted and referenced in the 21st century. Chronicling the novel's contexts, its origins and its many multi-media adaptations, this book is a complete biography of the life – and the afterlives – of The War of the Worlds. Exploring the original text's compelling sense of place and vivid recreation of Wells's Woking home and the concerns of fin-de-siécle Britain, the book goes on to chart the novel's immediate international impact. Starting with the initial serialisations in US newspapers, Peter Beck goes on to examine Orson Welles's legendary 1938 radio adaptation, TV and film adaptations from George Pal to Steven Spielberg, Jeff Wayne's rock opera and the numerous other works that have taken their inspiration from Wells's original. Drawing on new archival research, this is a comprehensive account of the continuing impact of The War of the Worlds.

War Stars

Howard Bruce Franklin
War Stars Book PDF

Author : Howard Bruce Franklin
Publisher : Univ of Massachusetts Press
Page : 324 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2008
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1558496513

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War Stars by Howard Bruce Franklin Pdf

In this new and expanded edition of an already classic work, H. Bruce Franklin brings the epic story of the superweapon and the American imagination into the ominous twenty-first century, demonstrating its continuing importance both to comprehending our current predicament and to finding ways to escape from it. Sweeping through two centuries of American culture and military history, Franklin traces the evolution of superweapons from Robert Fulton's eighteenth-century submarine through the strategic bomber, atomic bomb, and Star Wars to a twenty-first century dominated by "weapons of mass destruction," real and imagined. Interweaving culture, science, technology, and history, he shows how and why the American pursuit of the ultimate defensive weapon -- guaranteed to end all war and bring universal triumph to American ideals -- has led our nation and the world into an epoch of terror and endless war.

The Idea of Greater Britain

Duncan Bell
The Idea of Greater Britain Book PDF

Author : Duncan Bell
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 335 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2011-04-17
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780691151168

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The Idea of Greater Britain by Duncan Bell Pdf

During the tumultuous closing decades of the nineteenth century, as the prospect of democracy loomed and as intensified global economic and strategic competition reshaped the political imagination, British thinkers grappled with the question of how best to organize the empire. Many found an answer to the anxieties of the age in the idea of Greater Britain, a union of the United Kingdom and its settler colonies in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and southern Africa. In The Idea of Greater Britain, Duncan Bell analyzes this fertile yet neglected debate, examining how a wide range of thinkers conceived of this vast "Anglo-Saxon" political community. Their proposals ranged from the fantastically ambitious--creating a globe-spanning nation-state--to the practical and mundane--reinforcing existing ties between the colonies and Britain. But all of these ideas were motivated by the disquiet generated by democracy, by challenges to British global supremacy, and by new possibilities for global cooperation and communication that anticipated today's globalization debates. Exploring attitudes toward the state, race, space, nationality, and empire, as well as highlighting the vital theoretical functions played by visions of Greece, Rome, and the United States, Bell illuminates important aspects of late-Victorian political thought and intellectual life.

War, Citizenship, Territory

Deborah Cowen,Emily Gilbert
War Citizenship Territory Book PDF

Author : Deborah Cowen,Emily Gilbert
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 419 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2008
Category : History
ISBN : 9780415956932

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War, Citizenship, Territory by Deborah Cowen,Emily Gilbert Pdf

Features 19 chapters that look at the impact of war and militarism on citizenship, whether traditional territorially-bound national citizenship or "transnational" citizenship. This text sets forth a geopolitically based theory of war's transformative role on contemporary forms of citizenship and territoriality.

After the New Wave

Nader Elhefnawy
After the New Wave Book PDF

Author : Nader Elhefnawy
Publisher : Nader Elhefnawy
Page : 241 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2015-07-19
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 8210379456XXX

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After the New Wave by Nader Elhefnawy Pdf

AFTER THE NEW WAVE: SCIENCE FICTION TODAY is a revised and updated version of AFTER THE NEW WAVE, Nader Elhefnawy's earlier collection of essays on science fiction.

The Spanish Military and Warfare from 1899 to the Civil War

José Vicente Herrero Pérez
The Spanish Military and Warfare from 1899 to the Civil War Book PDF

Author : José Vicente Herrero Pérez
Publisher : Springer
Page : 355 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2017-09-14
Category : History
ISBN : 9783319547473

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The Spanish Military and Warfare from 1899 to the Civil War by José Vicente Herrero Pérez Pdf

This book explores the attitudes of the Spanish army officer corps towards the evolution of warfare during the early decades of the twentieth century, and their influence on the armies of the Spanish Civil War. It examines how the Spanish military coped with technological innovations such as the machine gun and the tank, how it adapted the army ́s battlefield doctrine to changes in warfare before the Civil War, and the influence of this doctrine on the outcome of the conflict. Of the different armed forces that fought in the Spanish Civil War, it is paradoxically the Spanish army that remains most forgotten - especially its military doctrine. Scholarship on the Spanish military in this period focuses on its politics, ideology and institutional reforms, touching upon 'hard' professional issues only superficially, if at all. Based on original research and using largely unstudied Spanish primary sources, this book fills a major scholarly gap in the history of the Spanish army and the Spanish Civil War.

Twentieth-Century Victorian

Cranfield Jonathan Cranfield
Twentieth Century Victorian Book PDF

Author : Cranfield Jonathan Cranfield
Publisher : Edinburgh University Press
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2016-06-14
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781474406765

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Twentieth-Century Victorian by Cranfield Jonathan Cranfield Pdf

A literary history of Arthur Conan Doyle's work with the Strand Magazine in the twentieth centuryYou know Arthur Conan Doyle as the stereotypically 'Victorian' author of the Sherlock Holmes stories which, on the lavishly-illustrated pages of the Strand Magazine, captivated and defined the late nineteenth-century marketplace for popular fiction and magazine publishing. This book tells the story of that relationship and the aftermath its enormous success as author and publication sought to shepherd their determinedly Victorian audience through the problems and crises of the early twentieth century. Here you can discover the Conan Doyle who used his public platform to fight for divorce reform, for the rights of colonised peoples, for State welfare programmes, for the abolition of blood sports and who, even in his last years, foresaw the coming of the Second World War, the Cold War and the age of weapons of mass destruction. The twentieth-century Conan Doyle was not a man with his eyes fixed upon the past but determinedly responding to a changing world with as much vigour and commitment as any modernist writer.Key FeaturesOriginal approach to Conan Doyle as a 'popular modernist'Analyses many forgotten and neglected novels, short stories, letters, pamphlets and non-fiction pieces, many of which have gone entirely unremarked within existing criticismProvides new periodical context by using forgotten material from the Strand to situate the work of Conan Doyle (and other popular writers from the period) within their historical moment Draws on original research into the artistic and business history of the Strand magazine, its writers and its employees

The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction

Rob Latham
The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction Book PDF

Author : Rob Latham
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 640 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2014-09-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780199838851

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The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction by Rob Latham Pdf

The excitement of possible futures found in science fiction has long fired the human imagination, but the genre's acceptance by academe is relatively recent. No longer marginalized and fighting for respectability, science-fictional works are now studied alongside more traditional art forms. Tracing the capacious genre's birth, evolution, and impact across nations, time periods, subgenres, and media, The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction offers an in-depth, comprehensive assessment of this robust area of scholarly inquiry and considers the future directions that will dictate the terms of the scholarly discourse. The Handbook begins with a focus on questions of genre, covering topics such as critical history, keywords, narrative, the fantastic, and fandom. A subsequent section on media engages with film, television, comics, architecture, music, video games, and more. The genre's role in the convergence of art and everyday life animates a third section, which addresses topics such as UFOs, the Atomic Era, the Space Race between the US and USSR, organized religion, automation, the military, sexuality, steampunk, and retrofuturism. The final section on worldviews features perspectives on SF's relationship to the gothic, evolution, colonialism, feminism, afrofuturism, utopianism, and posthumanism. Along the way, the Handbook's forty-four original essays cover novels by the likes of Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Philip K. Dick, and Octavia Butler; horror-tinged pulp magazines like Weird Tales; B-movies and classic films that include 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Star Wars; mind-bending TV shows like The Twilight Zone and Dr. Who; and popular video games such as Eve Online. Showing how science fiction's unique history and subcultural identity have been constructed in ongoing dialogue with popular discourses of science and technology, The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction acknowledges the full range of texts and modalities that make science fiction today less a genre than a way of being in the world.

May the Armed Forces Be with You

Stephen Dedman
May the Armed Forces Be with You Book PDF

Author : Stephen Dedman
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 251 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2016-09-02
Category : History
ISBN : 9781476622866

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May the Armed Forces Be with You by Stephen Dedman Pdf

Science fiction and the United States military often inhabit the same imaginative space. Weapons technology has taken inspiration from science fiction, from the bazooka and the atomic bomb to weaponized lasers and drones. Star-spangled superheroes sold war bonds in comic books sent to GIs during World War II, and adorned the noses of bombers. The same superheroes now appear in big-budget movies made with military assistance, fighting evil in today's war zones. A missile shield of laser satellites--dreamed up by writers and embraced by the high command--is partially credited with ending the Cold War. Sci-fi themes and imagery are used to sell weapons programs, military service and wars to the public. Some science fiction creators have willingly cooperated with the military; others have been conscripted. Some have used the genre as a forum for protest. This book examines the relationship between the U.S. military and science fiction through more than 80 years of novels, comics, films and television series, including Captain America, Starship Troopers, The Twilight Zone, Dr. Strangelove, Star Trek, Iron Man, Bill the Galactic Hero, The Forever War, Star Wars, Aliens, Ender's Game, Space: Above and Beyond and Old Man's War.

Books and Beyond [4 volumes]

Kenneth Womack
Books and Beyond 4 volumes Book PDF

Author : Kenneth Womack
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 1333 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2008-10-30
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780313071577

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Books and Beyond [4 volumes] by Kenneth Womack Pdf

There's a strong interest in reading for pleasure or self-improvement in America, as shown by the popularity of Harry Potter, and book clubs, including Oprah Winfrey's. Although recent government reports show a decline in recreational reading, the same reports show a strong correlation between interest in reading and academic acheivement. This set provides a snapshot of the current state of popular American literature, including various types and genres. The volume presents alphabetically arranged entries on more than 70 diverse literary categories, such as cyberpunk, fantasy literature, flash fiction, GLBTQ literature, graphic novels, manga and anime, and zines. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and provides a definition of the genre, an overview of its history, a look at trends and themes, a discussion of how the literary form engages contemporary issues, a review of the genre's reception, a discussion of authors and works, and suggestions for further reading. Sidebars provide fascinating details, and the set closes with a selected, general bibliography. Reading in America for pleasure and knowledge continues to be popular, even while other media compete for attention. While students continue to read many of the standard classics, new genres have emerged. These have captured the attention of general readers and are also playing a critical role in the language arts classroom. This book maps the state of popular literature and reading in America today, including the growth of new genres, such as cyberpunk, zines, flash fiction, GLBTQ literature, and other topics. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and provides a definition of the genre, an overview of its history, a look at trends and themes, a discussion of how the literary form engages contemporary issues, a review of the genre's critical reception, a discussion of authors and works, and suggestions for further reading. Sidebars provide fascinating details, and the set closes with a selected, general bibliography. Students will find this book a valuable guide to what they're reading today and will appreciate its illumination of popular culture and contemporary social issues.

Dreamworlds of Race

Duncan Bell
Dreamworlds of Race Book PDF

Author : Duncan Bell
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 484 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2022-06-07
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780691235110

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Dreamworlds of Race by Duncan Bell Pdf

How transatlantic thinkers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries promoted the unification of Britain and the United States Between the late nineteenth century and the First World War an ocean-spanning network of prominent individuals advocated the unification of Britain and the United States. They dreamt of the final consolidation of the Angloworld. Scholars, journalists, politicians, businessmen, and science fiction writers invested the “Anglo-Saxons” with extraordinary power. The most ambitious hailed them as a people destined to bring peace and justice to the earth. More modest visions still imagined them as likely to shape the twentieth century. Dreamworlds of Race explores this remarkable moment in the intellectual history of racial domination, political utopianism, and world order. Focusing on a quartet of extraordinary figures—Andrew Carnegie, W. T. Stead, Cecil J. Rhodes, and H. G. Wells—Duncan Bell shows how unionists on both sides of the Atlantic reimagined citizenship, empire, patriotism, race, war, and peace in their quest to secure global supremacy. Yet even as they dreamt of an Anglo-dominated world, the unionists disagreed over the meaning of race, the legitimacy of imperialism, the nature of political belonging, and the ultimate form and purpose of unification. The racial dreamworld was an object of competing claims and fantasies. Exploring speculative fiction as well as more conventional forms of political writing, Bell reads unionist arguments as expressions of the utopianism circulating through fin-de-siècle Anglo-American culture, and juxtaposes them with pan-Africanist critiques of racial domination and late twentieth-century fictional narratives of Anglo-American empire. Tracing how intellectual elites promoted an ambitious project of political and racial unification between Britain and the United States, Dreamworlds of Race analyzes ideas of empire and world order that reverberate to this day.