Animating the Science Fiction Imagination

By J P Telotte and J.P. Telotte

Long before flying saucers, robot monsters, and alien menaces invaded our movie screens in the 1950s, there was already a significant but overlooked body of cinematic science fiction. Through analyses of early twentieth-century animations, comic strips, and advertising, Animating the Science Fiction Imagination unearths a significant body of cartoon science fiction from the pre-World War II era that appeared at approximately the same time the genre was itself struggling to find an identity, an audience, and even a name. In this book, author J.P. Telotte argues that these films helped sediment the genre's attitudes and motifs into a popular culture that found many of those ideas unsettling, even threatening. By binding those ideas into funny and entertaining narratives, these cartoons also made them both familiar and non-threatening, clearing a space for visions of the future, of other worlds, and of change that could be readily embraced in the post-war period.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0190695277
• ISBN13: 9780190695279
• Release Date: November 2017
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.9" x 9.1"