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The Science Fiction Pulps and the Rhetoric of Technology

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The Science Fiction Pulps and the Rhetoric of Technology And Consumption For All: The Science Fiction Pulps and the Rhetoric of Technology Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation Authors Scott, Ronald Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 23/09/2021 11:08:54 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/194689 AND CONSUMPTION FOR ALL: THE SCIENCE FICTION PULPS AND THE RHETORIC OF TECHNOLOGY by Ronald Franklin Scott ___________________________ Copyright © Ronald Franklin Scott 2005 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH In Partial Requirement for the Fulfillment For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2005 2 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Dissertation Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by Ron Scott entitled “And Consumption For All: The Science Fiction Pulps and the Rhetoric of Technology” and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. _______________________________________________________________________ Date: November 1, 2002. Dr. Suresh Raval _______________________________________________________________________ Date: November 1, 2002 Dr. Susan White _______________________________________________________________________ Date: November 1, 2002 Dr. Ken McAllister Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate’s submission of the final copies of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement. ________________________________________________ Date: November 1, 2002 Dissertation Director: Dr. Suresh Raval 3 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgement of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the copyright holder. SIGNED: Ronald F. Scott 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS………………………………………………...6 ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………….7 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION..........................................................….......….8 Poe, Political Economy, and Literary Control........................................…....…11 Invention: A Case Study……………………………………………..……15 Why the Rhetoric of Technology?…………………………………………18 The Rhetoric of Technology and the Power of Dialectic…………………..21 Technology Defined……………………………………………………….26 Ideology-Free: The Instrumentalist View………………………………….28 Enmeshed in the Web: The Substantive View…………………………….30 The Potential of Fiction: Addressing the “Moral Problem” of Technology..36 The Question of Agency…………………………………………………...38 The Cult of Personality and the Search for Action…………………………41 The Inventor, the Engineer, and the Hacker……………………………….43 Science Fiction as a Technological Genre………………………………….46 The Pulps and Technological Identity……………………………………...48 Saving the Earth: A Case Study……………………………………………51 Why the Pulps?…………………………………………………………….53 The Pulps Between the Wars and Beyond………………………………….54 SF and Technocracy………………………………………………………..57 Easy Solutions to Complex Problems/Situations…………………………..59 CHAPTER 2: THE INVENTOR…………………………………………...61 Invention as the Key to Progress…………………………………………..63 The Production of Knowledge…………………………………………….68 Poe and the Power of Invention…………………………………………...69 Invention in the Pulps……………………………………………………..71 The Inventor’s Motivation………………………………………………....74 H. G. Wells: The Inventor as Social Pariah………………………………..76 The Scientist within the System: Two Versions of The Invisible Man……….79 The Crazy Inventor and the Technocratic Meritocracy…………………….86 The Inventor and Power…………………………………………………...90 The Mad Scientist: Satisfying Dreams of Totalitarian Rule………………...91 The Mad Scientist as Cautionary Figure……………………………………94 The Inventor and Self-Reflection: Poised on the Verge of Apocalypse……97 Invention, Discovery, and Colonialism…………………………………….99 Discovering ‘New Worlds’: Walter Kateley and the Kingston Series…...…103 The Demise of the Inventor………………………………………………107 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS - Continued CHAPTER 3: THE ENGINEER…………………………………………..111 Automation and the Division of Labor: Taylorism meets Marx……………117 Planning the Nation’s Future: A Middle Class Vision……………………..120 Poe’s Prescience: The Artist as Engineer………………………………….122 The Engineer as Hero: H. G. Wells’s “The Land Ironclads”………...…….126 Engineers in the Pulps…….………………………………………………131 Replacing the Inventor…….………………………………………………133 City Planning……………….……………………………………………...136 Cities in the Pulps…………………………………………………………141 Visual Argumentation: Illustrations of the City……………………………147 The American Pastoral Paradise and the Demise of the City………………154 Engineering and the New Colonial Vision…………………………………160 Engineering Future Possibilities: Heredity and Technocracy………………164 The Demise of the Engineer………………………………………………166 CHAPTER 4: THE HACKER……………………………………………...171 Enter the Hacker………………………………………………………….174 The Need for Information Management…………………………………..177 Technological Anxiety and the Hacker…………………………………….180 The Best of Both Worlds………………………………………………….182 The Origin of the Hacker………………………………………………….183 Poe and the Process of Analysis……………………………………………184 The Detective in the SF Pulps: An Overview……………………………...187 Detecting the Pulps: Case Studies…………………………………………189 Hacking as an Exercise in Teamwork……………………………………....199 Crews in Space: The Pulps………………………………………………...202 The Hacker is the Future…………………………………………………...210 CHAPTER 5: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?………………………212 The Technological Gap…………………………………………………….214 Entering the Conversation Where It Matters……………………………….217 Can the Margins of Maneuver be Exploited?……………………………….220 What Can Humanities Instructors Possibly Do?……………………………221 Teaching with Science Fiction: The Matrix…………………………………224 ‘Fight the Future:’ The Radical Possibilities of Technological Literacy…….226 FOOTNOTES ..………………………………………………………………230 WORKS CITED.……………………………………………………………...240 6 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FIGURE 3.1, Illustration for ‘A Story of the Days to Come’…………228 FIGURE 3.2, Illustration for ‘The Supreme Machine’………………...229 FIGURE 3.3, Illustration for ‘Little Hercules’………………………...230 7 ABSTRACT This dissertation argues that in industrial society technology is not merely an immaterial, abstract set of machines but instead has a rhetoric all its own. This rhetoric of technology consists of myriad elements, ranging from cultural conversations about machines and the engineering principles from which they’re derived to class relationships naturalized by industrial structures. In the United States, the rhetoric of technology focuses on individuals, creating cults of personality that embody an otherwise abstract entity. This dissertation asserts that these cults focus on specific components of the process of technological development, represented as inventors, engineers, and hackers. The bulk of the dissertation explores the creation and continuation of these cults in American popular culture. Specifically, it examines how these representations are used in the science fiction pulp magazines, published from 1926-1949. Each cult has a period of ascendancy followed by a lessened importance in the rhetoric of technology, and these ebbs and flows are thoroughly represented in the pulps. Each of these cults has its own chapter, with Chapter 1 focusing on the history and definition of the term ‘rhetoric of technology’ and Chapter 5 examining ways to teach the rhetoric of technology in the college classroom. Chapter 2 focuses on inventors; Chapter 3 examines engineers; and Chapter 4 traces the beginnings of hackers. 8 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION I pull eye from eyepiece and look down at the telescope’s white barrel in amazement. Technology may produce a haze to choke cities. It may leak crude into the oceans. But it has also unveiled a universe made of glittering jewels. (Benson 101) In American critical lore, Edgar Allan Poe occupies many positions. As Joan Dayan argues in her magnum opus on Poe, Fables of Mind: An Inquiry into Poe’s Fiction, he’s been the “poor descendent of eighteenth-century propriety and ordonnance, child of nineteenth-century romanticism, [and the] herald of twentieth-century alienation” (8). His racism often prevented acknowledgement of his incredible command of both prosaic and poetic style, while doubts about the quality of his subject matter kept him from the canon of American literary greats until the beginning of the twentieth century. He’s given credit for being the father of several fictional genres, ranging from American Gothic to the detective novel to science fiction (SF). A German scholar, Klaus Benesch, claims that Poe invented the first cyborg in his short story “The Man That Was Used Up,” and one of the first psychoanalytic literary critics, Marie Bonaparte, used Poe’s works to create a genre of criticism based
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