Product Description: When physicist Robert Goddard, whose career was inspired by H. G. Wells's War of the Worlds, published "A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes," the response was electric. Newspaper headlines across the country announced, "Modern Jules Verne Invents Rocket to Reach Moon," while people from around the world, including two World War I pilots, volunteered as pioneers in space exploration...read more

(view table of contents)

Traces the historical development and examines the social consciousness and limitations of the genre, using familiar science-fiction stories to explore such themes as the atomic bomb, the failure of human evolution, and man against machine