Movies, Modernism, and the Science Fiction Pulps

Abstract

Abstract This book considers the impact that the new art of film had on the development of the emerging science fiction (SF) genre during the pre- and early post-World War II era, during the time that the genre was trying to locate an identity, develop its key themes, and even settle on a name. Focusing on the primary venue for early SF literature, the popular pulp magazines such as Amazing Stories, Wonder Stories, and Astounding Stories, it traces this early film/literature relationship by examining four common features of the pulps: stories that involve film or the film industry; film-related advertising; editors’ commentaries and readers’ remarks on film; and cover and story illustrations. All these features demonstrate an interest and even a fascination with the movies, which, as many of SF’s readers, writers, and editors recognized, demonstrated a modernist agenda similar to that which characterized the literature. By surveying these haunting traces of another medium in early SF discourse, this book shows how that cinematic influence penetrated and, both consciously and unconsciously, helped shape the experience of SF, as well as the cultural idea of SF during this formative period.