1956 was a momentous year for science fiction, with the release of timeless films and the publication of classic novels and stories. It was also a pivotal year for the world at large, with events producing ripples we still feel seven decades later.
This book explores how the years landmark works films such as Forbidden Planet and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and stories such as Asimovs The Last Question and Clarkes The City and the Stars emerged from their cultural context. Writers, artists, and film directors reflected the eras tension between optimism and anxiety, between the promise and peril of progress.
The book traces, month-by-month, events in five themes: science and technology; politics and the economy; entertainment and arts; celebrity culture; and competitive sport. This was a climate defined by rapid change from the Suez Crisis to Elvis Presleys meteoric rise; from early computers to space race dreams. The science fiction emerging from this turbulent year helped form our collective imagination of tomorrow.
Introduction.- Part one january.- Pushing at boundaries.- Sf and
exploration.- Part two february.- Watching the watchers.- Sf and paranoia.-
Part three march.- Unseen currents.- Sf and analysis.- Part 4 april.- United
nations.- Sf and politics.- Part five may.- The seen and the silenced.- Sf
and women.- Part six june.- The price of blind faith.- Sf and pseudoscience.-
Part seven july.- Brushstrokes of history.- Sf and art.- Part eight august.-
Missteps and mayhem.- Sf and nuclear armageddon.- Part nine september.-
Signals of connection.- Sf and fandom.- Part ten october.- Rising stars.- Sf
and youth.- Part eleven november.- We will bury you.- Sf and the quest for
immortality.- Part twelve december.- Driving the future.- Sf and automation.-
Works and persons mentioned.- Index.
Following a first-class honours degree in Physics from the University of Bristol and a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Manchester Stephen Webb has worked at a number of UK universities. In addition to shorter works, he has published twelve books one of which won the SETI League award and was shortlisted for the Aventis Prize (now Royal Society Winton Prize) for best science book. He is active in outreach activities, having spoken at numerous international conferences, podcasts and radio shows, and his 2018 TED Talk has been viewed over 6 million times. He has published an undergraduate textbook Measuring the Universe (Springer, 1999) as well as several popular science books, among them New Eyes on the Universe (Springer, 2012) and the second edition of If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens ... WHERE IS EVERYBODY? (Springer, 2015).
