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Screams of Reason: Mad Science in Modern Culture Hardcover – January 1, 1998
Purchase options and add-ons
- Print length368 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherW W Norton & Co Inc
- Publication dateJanuary 1, 1998
- Dimensions6.75 x 1.25 x 9.75 inches
- ISBN-10039304582X
- ISBN-13978-0393045826
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The first few chapters focus on the origins of the mad-science mentality in the early 19th century. The age of Darwin and the Industrial Revolution saw the birth of many of the stock figures and themes of horror and science fiction: Frankenstein, Jekyll and Hyde, Dr. Moreau; creation of new life forms, contravention of natural law, science out of control. Then, in the early 20th century, the new medium of film helped make all of these into staples of popular culture. Succeeding chapters deal with types and trends in the mad-science phenomenon, touching on a variety of subjects, such as the classic horror movies of the 1930s, nuclear-age mutation and invasion fantasies, medical horror, the union of man and machine, apocalyptic entertainment, and "Alien Chic."
Movies certainly play a significant role in the whole mad-science phenomenon; Screams, however, is much more than a catalog of the classic horror and sci-fi entries. Skal's insightful, eloquent history gets at the psychological and social roots of our uneasy relationship with science and technology, and our attempts to master the fear of them.
Screams includes abundant notes, many black-and-white illustrations, and an appendix listing dozens of mad scientists from popular culture. Highly recommended. --M.V. Burke
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
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Skal's latest venture into the dark side of the movies deals with the perennial villains of imaginative melodramas--mad scientists--and provides an amusing and chilling odyssey....The most famous (or at least, bemused) scientists of literature and cinema--Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Jack Griffin (the Invisible Man) and Dr. Moreau--are given the royal treatment. -- American Cinematographer, George Turner, December 1998
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Product details
- Publisher : W W Norton & Co Inc; First Edition (January 1, 1998)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 368 pages
- ISBN-10 : 039304582X
- ISBN-13 : 978-0393045826
- Item Weight : 1.84 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.75 x 1.25 x 9.75 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,490,728 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #5,589 in Movie History & Criticism
- #9,047 in Popular Culture in Social Sciences
- #165,230 in Science & Math (Books)
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By chapter four, he gets to World War II and the post-war period, when mad scientists had become a significant part of popular entertainment. He tries to write about how the public reacts to the Manhattan Project and scientists like Einstein, but his analysis seems to be part of a different book. Is he writing about Mary Shelley, horror movies, science, or what?
Chapter five is all about alien visitations and flying saucers. Chapter six is about mad medical doctors like Mengele, doctor Frankenstein, Robin Cook's book 'Coma' (and the film), Dead Ringers, and AIDS. Chapter seven has something to do with flesh and cyborgs --- I think. It's not clear what that chapter was supposed to be about. The author wraps it all up with a list of famous mad scientists. The list is filler, but I enjoyed reading the "mad ambition/achievement" for each one.
This is good bathroom reading. The subject matter is fun because it's about popular culture and mad scientists, two topics that are never dull. But it's poorly-edited, with the feel of an enthusiastic rough first draft. My guess is that after the success of The Monster Show, Skal sent the idea for this book to his publisher, they loved the proposal, and he hammered it out quickly for fun. That's no crime, but I was really disappointed with it..
Just from its title alone I was delighted to discover
this book. Mad science, scientists and 19th-20th
century Scientism is a remarkably important and overlooked
aspect of our culture and its progress.
And Professor Skal gets closer to providing
a history and understanding of this cultural
iconography than anyone has ever been able to do.
Much credit is due him!
However, as fascinating and stimulating and just plain right
as most of his thesis proves to be, equal parts suffer from
that most dread of all contemporary ills - ACADEMIC HUBRIS!
(And yes, I know he is not an academician. But a rose by
any other name...)
The last three chapters and the conclusion suffered from too much
specious overreaching; an attempt to somehow hyper-link his
way through the tangle of ideas/imagery/opinions that he was brave enough to try and decipher in the first place.
Obfuscation
rather than clarification was usually the result of all those
cross-references. Perhaps a separate volume would have been
more appropriate, giving the Professor a chance to stretch out
his line of reasoning.
Do not get me wrong! A VITAL ADDITION to any cinema/science-fiction/horror or popular culture student or just plain fan's library. As in his excellent Monster Show, the chapter on B Movies is worth owning this book for -- terrific insight!
Excellent quality hardcover, readable font, nice paper, some well
chosen pictures along the way.
(BUT, definitely overdue for a less expensive softcover edition!)
One last criticism, though:
The chapter on Alien Chic seques from a UFO sighting the
author recalls from his college years. I found it depressingly
typical - and illustrative of this otherwise wonderful book's
flaws - that his personal experience did not inspire a better understanding of such an important subject.
It always saddens me to find an excellent mind such as Mr. Skal's more or less shuttering itself off from reality in favor of "academic objectivity", or the pristine pursuit of
a cultural theory. The fact that his repression of
the facts associated with UFOs needs to find justification from Maven-dom, as well as movie release dates,
actually only serves to reveal his own monomania, and
therfore the book's primary thesis.
Just what the doktor ordered?







