A Distant Technology: Science Fiction Film and the Machine Age

Telotte, J. P. A Distant Technology: Science Fiction Film and the Machine Age. Hanover, NH, and London, UK: Wesleyan UP, 1999. Published by University Press of New England, 1999.

See for "triangulating film, science fiction, and modern technological culture to reveal the significant reshaping that was underway, as the modern world, through its embrace of technology and its powers, was just beginning to point the way to a postmodern world" (p. 25).

Contents Include

1. Introduction: Technology and Distance
2. Revolution as Technology: Soviet Science Fiction Film
3. The Picture of Distance: German Science Fiction Film
4. A Remote Power: French Science Fiction Film
5. A Cinema of Spectacle: American Science Fiction Film
6. A Monumental Event: British Science Fiction Film
7. "I Have Seen the Future": The New York World's Fair as Science Fiction

Followed by Conclusion, Notes, select Filmography, Bibliography, and Index.

Note more specifically for, and/or also:

Discussion of Y. Zamyatin and his important Machine Age dystopian fiction We (pp. 33-34).

Charles Chaplin's MODERN TIMES.

"The scientist and the robot" — and the workers — of Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS.

The Flash Gordon andBuck Rogers film serials. 

Genre mixing in GENE AUTRY AND THE PHANTOM EMPIRE.

A significant discussion of THE INVISIBLE RAY (Universal, 1935/36).

The handling of THINGS TO COME.

And that discussion of the New York World's Fair (of, significantly, 1939) as SF, including for an approach to aspects of Thomas Pynchon's 2006 novel, Against the Day and its use of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair ("World's Columbian Exposition" [1492/93 + 400 = 1893]). 

Reviewed by Joseph Milicia, SFRA Review #240 (June 1999): 24-35. For on-line availability check U South Florida digital library, possibly available here[1] or at the link here.[2]

RDE, finishing, 23May23, 12Aug23