Imagining Outer Space: European Astroculture in the Twentieth Century

Front Matter....Pages i-xviii
Front Matter....Pages 1-1
European Astrofuturism, Cosmic Provincialism: Historicizing the Space Age....Pages 3-24
Front Matter....Pages 25-25
Space, Time and Aliens: The Role of Imagination in Outer Space....Pages 27-44
Heaven on Earth: Tunguska, 30 June 1908....Pages 45-64
Imagining Inorganic Life: Crystalline Aliens in Science and Fiction....Pages 65-85
Front Matter....Pages 87-87
Projecting Landscapes of the Human Mind onto Another World: Changing Faces of an Imaginary Mars....Pages 89-105
‘Smash the Myth of the Fascist Rocket Baron’: East German Attacks on Wernher von Braun in the 1960s....Pages 106-126
Transcendence of Gravity: Arthur C. Clarke and the Apocalypse of Weightlessness....Pages 127-146
Front Matter....Pages 147-147
Per Media Ad Astra? Outer Space in West Germany’s Media, 1957–1987....Pages 149-169
Balloons on the Moon: Visions of Space Travel in Francophone Comic Strips....Pages 170-188
A Stumble in the Dark: Contextualizing Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s Space: 1999....Pages 189-207
Front Matter....Pages 209-209
Life as We Don’t Yet Know It: An Anthropologist’s First Contact with the Science of ‘Weird Life’....Pages 211-223
A Ghost in the Machine: How Sociology Tried to Explain (Away) American Flying Saucers and European Ghost Rockets, 1946–1947....Pages 224-244
Seeing the Future of Civilization in the Skies of Quarouble: UFO Encounters and the Problem of Empire in Postwar France....Pages 245-264
Front Matter....Pages 265-265
Self-Reproducing Automata and the Impossibility of SETI....Pages 267-284
Inscribing Scientific Knowledge: Interstellar Communication, NASA’s Pioneer Plaque, and Contact with Cultures of the Imagination, 1971–1972....Pages 285-303
Alien Spotting: Damien Hirst’s Beagle 2 Mars Lander Calibration Target and the Exploitation of Outer Space....Pages 304-315
Front Matter....Pages 317-317
Look Up! Art in the Age of Orbitization....Pages 319-341
Back Matter....Pages 342-405