Customer Reviews

Another Science Fiction: Advertising the Space Race 1957-1962

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If you were a youngster like me during the dawn of The Space Age, this book is a trip down memory lane.

I read and watched everything I could find about space travel and aviation, so most of these ads passed by my eyes at one time or another.

It was fun turning the pages and coming upon an image that I hadn't seen in 50 years or more. It recalled to me the wonder and the fabulous anticipation I felt at the time as man made his first baby steps into space.

The book is also kind of depressing, to see visions of a future that never arrived. The shuttle looks likes like a bus with wings, not the sleek streamlined spacecraft of the 50's. The ISS looks like a floating junk yard compared to the giant rotating wheeled space stations of those days. Damn it, I want my private spaceship, my vacations on the moon, tourist trips to Mars, day trips to the giant wheel space stations. What happened to the future we were promised in all these ads?

Oh well, if you're a Baby Boomer, and you were/are a space enthusiast who grew up in the late 50's and early 60's, you WILL enjoy this book.

For those of us who grew up during the golden age of space exploration, this book is a treasure trove. Although I had never seen most of the illustrations they transported me back to those exciting days when America had vision, courage, and commitment. Now as we shut down the shuttle program, I wonder what happened.

I came across some old Look and Life magazines at a thrift shop recently. They all featured John F. Kennedy - his inaugural as president, his assassination, the funeral, Jackie and the kids one year after. Important and memorable topics, but when I actually sat down to look at the magazines, I found that I was flipping past the articles and studying the ads. Buicks and Studebakers and Chevys, cigarettes, whiskey and beer, typewriters, canned soup, TV dinners. They were fascinating.

Author Megan Prelinger collected the best and most interesting ads from five years worth of aviation and technology magazines. The result is Another Science Fiction, a document that is probably more revealing about the era than the collected articles in those same magazines, and certainly more entertaining.

The overall impression is one of optimism and the expectation that science and technology will pave the way to a bright future. We're going to the moon. ... and beyond!

Contrast that with aviation and technology magazines of today. The ads are overwhelmingly military-themed, featuring weapons and soldiers. They are utilitarian ads, using photographs and text.

The space age ads are also often utilitarian and direct, but just as often they are whimsical or futuristic. Many are works of art. The Martin Company (later Martin-Marietta, then Lockheed-Martin) used many paintings by graphic artist Willi K. Baum, most of which would not look out of place in a modern art gallery.

On opening Another Science Fiction, I first looked at all the images, and then read the text later. It was fun to start to recognize the style of some of the regular artists for the various companies. The text was informative, explaining what some of the ad campaigns were about (some of the products advertised were pretty technical and specific to the space and aviation industries). Prelinger also talks about how the space race influenced the appearance of books and magazines, TV and movies.

The result is a crash course in one brief shining moment in American history.

As I write this it's nine years after "2001: A Space Odyssey" was supposed to have taken place and not only do we not have PanAm clippers flying to the Moon, we don't even have PanAm any more and thanks to idiots, morons and fear-mongering bedwetters overreacting to 9/11 and creating the TSA, going to an airport and getting on an airplane is like visiting a minimum security prison. But back in the 1950s and 1950s the American military industrial complex was engaged in a space race with the Soviet Union, and they worked their asses off to sell it to the American public with some absolutely glorious and incredibly imaginative advertising campaigns. This book is another high quality product from the Prelinger archives, it's beautifully laid out and incredibly well written, Megan Shaw Prelinger ties multiple threads together to weave a tapestry describing the aesthetic dynamics of the space age, an era where the United States didn't know how difficult it was going to be to put a man in the Moon and didn't care, because damnit, we had to kick commie ass and beat the Soviets.
In the last 50 years though we seem to have gone from being a nation that dared to dream big to being a nation that dares nothing and fears the unknown, reading this book shows you just how far we've fallen. How did a nation that dared to dream of doing dangerous and difficult things like putting a man on the Moon, and did so, repeatedly, fall so far and so quickly and become a nation of passive, fear-crazed sheep willing to let their crotches be groped by low-grade morons for the illusory promise of safety?

Another Science Fiction: Advertising the Space Race 1957-1962 This book is not getting the attention it deserves. I should be fascinating and insightful to people interested in many fields, includinig persuasive communication, 20th Century American history, psychology, engineering and technology, space exploration, and national defense.

The subject is very interesting, and I was glad to see someone paying attention to the "work" side of space exploration rather than the "fantasy" side. However, the commentary in the text was less than useful. I'd have preferred to see the *history* of the companies in question; what they did, how the advertisements did (or didn't) relate to that, whether the company was successful. Instead the commentary focused on broader themes, and often veered off completely into left field to discuss contemporary issues irrelevant to the subject matter.

In other words, "nice pictures, quit yakking about terrorism".

I have a number of collections of ads from the '50's and '60's - the years just prior to the changes in photographic and engraving technology that rendered illustration passe'. This book is one of my favorites. Of course it recalls what some like to call "a simpler time." Personally, I don't recall the 1950's and 1960's as exactly simpler than today. Certainly, the pace of information was slower. Reading was mandatory, unlike today. As a result, the copy writing in the ads was generally more thoughtful, though it may seem a little corny to today's irony-infused reader. The illustrations are amazing. Even the art that was "phoned in" by the standards of the time looks pretty darn good today.

I have to say that I don't normally think a lot about what advertising says about cultural perspectives, but this book is a fascinating exploration of the early space race and how the nascent space industry tried to communicate its own understanding about what it did... or hoped to do. As wonderful as the reproductions are, Ms. Prelinger's text is the real treasure, as she helps the reader place these images in context and guides us through an understanding of how the imagery changed over time and why.

Really neat book. Cool retro advertizing art from a time now long since past and much more innocent.

Very small print, could have been better. A little history, and picture, but they really did not tie together that well