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.

About the Author
J. P. Telotte is Professor of film and media studies at Georgia Institute of Technology, co-editor of the journal Post Script, and author of many publications, most recently Robot Ecology and the Science Fiction Film (Routledge, 2016).


Book Information
ISBN 9780190695279
Author J. P. Telotte
Format Paperback
Page Count 160
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 274g
Dimensions(mm) 235mm * 157mm * 10mm