{"id":3697,"date":"2008-11-16T01:19:42","date_gmt":"2008-11-16T01:19:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2008\/11\/16\/welcome-to-mars\/"},"modified":"2008-11-16T05:21:35","modified_gmt":"2008-11-16T05:21:35","slug":"welcome-to-mars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2008\/11\/16\/welcome-to-mars\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to Mars"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"welcometomars.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Arriving today\u2014and barely surviving the postman’s attempts to cram it through the letterbox\u2014is the latest volume from Strange Attractor<\/a>, Welcome to Mars<\/em><\/a> by Ken Hollings<\/a>. I’m really looking forward to reading this since it touches on areas of interest which span the development of Cold War technologies to pulp science fiction, examining the interconnections between these disparate zones; most histories of the period prefer to stay in one area or the other. A glance at the chapter titles immediately pushes my buttons: “1947 Rebuilding Lemuria”, “1951 Absolute Elsewhere”. If all that wasn’t enough there’s an intro by Erik Davis<\/a> and the first 250 copies come with a CD of “classy analogue Outer Space exotica” by Simon James<\/a>. Order from the SA Shoppe<\/a> and get a free postcard!<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018Welcome to Mars<\/em> is a map of the post-war Zone, a non-fiction Gravity\u2019s Rainbow<\/em> that follows the arc of Germany\u2019s V2 rocket to the end of the rainbow \u2013 to America.\u2019 Erik Davis<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Welcome to Mars<\/em> is an iconoclastic, penetrating and darkly humorous history of America from 1947-1959, the decade in which the nation defined its image and created the blueprint for the world we live in today.<\/p>\n

Welcome To Mars<\/em> draws upon newspaper accounts, advertising campaigns, declassified government archives, old movies and newsreels from this unique period when the future first took on a tangible presence. Ken Hollings depicts an unsettled time in which the layout of Suburbia reflected atomic bombing strategies, bankers and movie stars experimented with hallucinogens, brainwashing was just another form of interior decoration and strange lights in the sky were taken very seriously indeed.<\/p>\n

Seamlessly interweaving developments in technology, popular culture, politics, changes in home life, the development of the self, collective fantasy and overwhelming paranoia, Hollings has produced an alarming and often hysterically funny vision of the past that would ultimately govern all of our futures.<\/p>\n

\u201cKen Hollings shows brilliantly how the extraordinary web of technologies that drove the Cold War have shaped not just our culture but the very way we think of ourselves as human beings. Welcome to Mars<\/em> offers a rare and fascinating glimpse of the roots of the strange humanoid culture we live in today.\u201d Adam Curtis<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2018Ken Hollings has placed his critical focus at the precise point where the high technologies of information control and social manipulation intersect the passionate search for scientific ways to probe the human mind. Welcome to Mars<\/em> is a searingly accurate and deeply disturbing expos\u00e9 of the fantasies of American modernism that have inspired the many nightmares and the few hopeful visions of our new Millennium.\u2019 Dr Jacques Vall\u00e9e<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 SAJ again<\/a>
\n\u2022 Strange Attractor Journal Three<\/a>
\n\u2022 How to make crop circles<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Arriving today\u2014and barely surviving the postman’s attempts to cram it through the letterbox\u2014is the latest volume from Strange Attractor, Welcome to Mars by Ken Hollings. I’m really looking forward to reading this since it touches on areas of interest which span the development of Cold War technologies to pulp science fiction, examining the interconnections between … Continue reading “Welcome to Mars”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[42,29,3,38,20,13,15],"tags":[498,1686,953,98],"class_list":["post-3697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-electronica","category-music","category-pulp","category-science-fiction","category-science","category-technology","tag-adam-curtis","tag-erik-davis","tag-ken-hollings","tag-strange-attractor"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-XD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3697\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}