Acknowledgments

Introduction

How Charlie Made Children Hate Him: Fantasy and Reality in Stories for Small Children

The Three Lives of Superman---And Everybody Else

Mystery of the Amateur Detectives: The Early Days of the Hardy Boys

Giving Horatio Alger Goosebumps, Or, From Hardy Boys to Hapless Boys: The Changing Ethos of Juvenile Series Fiction

From the Back of the Head to Beyond the Moon: The Novel and Film This Island Earth

Opposing War, Exploiting War: The Troubled Pacifism of Star Trek

Even Better than the Real Thing: Advertising, Music Videos, Postmodernism, and (Eventually) Science Fiction

Legends of the Fall: Going Not Particularly Far Behind the Music

Hollywood Strikes a Pose: Seven Tales of Triumph, Treachery, and Travail in Old Tinseltown

In Defense of Stone Tablets: Isaac Asimov Explains Why Science Fiction Is Skeptical about ``New Information Technologies''

Partial Derivatives: Popular Misinterpretations of H. G. Wells's The Time Machine

Bibliography

Index