(The beginning of a four-part essay on “The Fly”: its social context, the story itself, and its legacy. This may one day become part of something bigger.) The two decades that span World War II’s opening salvos to the planting of a human boot on the moon are considered by some the Golden Age of […]
(The second of four parts. Previous part.) George Langelaan’s life story might seem the stuff of fiction. Born in 1908, he served as a spy during World War II and received plastic surgery in order to protect his identity during an operation in France. After parachuting into occupied territory, he was captured by the enemy, […]
(The third of a four-part essay. Previous part.) Ominous fears seem right at home during the Second Red Scare, when the term “McCarthyism” was coined. With the launch of Sputnik the same year “The Fly” was published, it would be easy to read the story as a Cold War allegory, like other stories prophesying the […]
(The conclusion of a four-part essay. Previous part.) If the 1950s was a Golden Age of science fiction, then the 1980s was the future its writers wrought, perhaps unintentionally and with far from perfect prescience, but unquestionably content to take credit once again for space shuttles, the growing power of computers, and a military program […]