Astounding Wonder

John Cheng teaches Asian American studies at Binghamton University.

• Introduction. "The Hope of Today and the Reality of Tomorrow": Popular Science, Popular Culture, and Science FictionPART I. CIRCULATION1 "Magazines for Morons": Pulp Magazines and the Emergence of Science Fiction2 Conversations from the "Backyard": Reading and Imagining CommunityPART II. READING3 Discovering the Freedom of Facts: Fact, Fiction, and the Authority of Science4 Involving Adventure, Reassuring Romance: Engendering Science Fiction's Domestic Tranquillity5 Human Martians and Asian Aliens: The Racial Nature of Wondrous Worlds6 The Progress of Time: Einstein, History, and the Dimensions of Time TravelPART III. PRACTICE7 "Fandom Is Just a Goddamn Hobby": The Industry of Fans and Professionals8 "We Want to Play with Spaceships": Popular Rocket Science in ActionEpilogue. Beyond the "Gernsback Continuum": Science Fiction's Community and Social NetworksList of AbbreviationsNotesIndexAcknowledgments

Named in Locus magazine's 2012 Recommended Reading List"Astounding Wonder is an absorbing book. It tells fascinating tales of an often-neglected period of SF's history and brings contemporary actors to life through frequent quotation from archival sources."-Los Angeles Review of Books"Truly a multidisciplinary work with a unique perspective. . . . Cheng clearly loves his subject matter and infuses the book with a sense of humor."-Journal of American Culture"A wide-ranging, meticulously researched account of the emergence of science fiction as a genre in the United States during the interwar period. . . . Cheng's interpretations are often sophisticated, supporting his wider claims about the popular imaginings of science within the pulps."-Science Fiction Studies"Science fiction fans have long been the most avid aficionados in any arena of popular culture. Now with pioneering research and deep knowledge, John Cheng tells how thousands of Americans formed and sustained communities to pursue their visions of a future made better by science. Cheng's book chronicles a generation of young people inspired, engaged, and transformed by the possibilities of imaginary new worlds, ideas, and devices, so many of which inhabit our lives today. We live in a world they dreamed up, from space travel to cell phones, computers to nanotechnology. Cheng shows how readers and fans transformed science fiction from a marginal genre in the pulp magazine industry to a major cultural force."-Charles McGovern, College of William and Mary"John Cheng's highly readable book imaginatively shows the science fiction community's role in, and ways of, perceiving science. Cheng displays the ways in which readers incorporated science fiction into their lives, how this led them to think about science, and further still how some of them imagined aspects of that science into being. Displaying sure-handed use of challenging sources as well as deep knowledge of scientific as well as social theory, Astounding Wonder is cultural history at its best, and so much more."-Ian Gordon, author of Comic Strips and Consumer Culture