Rumors of War and Infernal Machines

[Dave Monroe]

Rumors of War and Infernal Machines: Technomilitary Agenda-setting in
American and British Speculative Fiction
By Charles E. Gannon 	

Choice Outstanding Book of the Year 2006

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 	


This provocative and unique work reveals the remarkably influential
role of futuristic literature on contemporary political power in
America. Tracing this phenomenon from its roots in Victorian Britain,
Rumors of War and Infernal Machines offers a fascinating exploration
of how fictional speculations on emergent or imaginary military
technologies profoundly influence the political agendas and actions of
modern superpower states. Gannon convincingly demonstrates that
military fiction anticipated and even influenced the evolution of the
tank, the development of the airplane, and also the bitter political
battles within Britain's War Office and the Admiralty. In the United
States, future-fictions and Cold-War thrillers were an officially
acknowledged factor in the Pentagon's research and development
agendas, and often gave rise—and shape—to the nation's strategic
development of technologies as diverse as automation, atomic weaponry,
aerospace vehicles, and the Strategic Defense Initiative ('Star
Wars'). His book reveals a striking relationship between the
increasing political influence of speculative military fiction and the
parallel rise of superpower states and their technocentric ideologies.
With its detailed political, historical, and literary analysis of U.S.
and British fascination with hi-tech warfare, this lively and
revealing study will appeal to students, literary and cultural
scholars, military and history enthusiasts, and general readers.

http://www.rowmanlittlefield.com/Catalog/SingleBook.shtml?command=Search&db=^DB/CATALOG.db&eqSKUdata=0742540340

http://books.google.com/books?id=dZKrzqFjnVIC