Technology and Culture

A decade ago, Alexander Geppert's edited collection Imagining Outer Space: European Astroculture in the Twentieth Century introduced the neologism "Astroculture," or "a heterogeneous array of images and artifacts, media and practices that all aim to ascribe meaning to outer space while stirring both the individual and collective imagination." Reviewing that volume for this journal, the esteemed space historian Roger D. Launius found its breadth and interdisciplinary approach "both refreshing and unnerving," as an array of perspectives ranging from history to anthropology to literary studies were corralled together to examine European responses to the promise and reality of space exploration. Launius expressed hope that in future volumes, cacophony would give way to harmony; if Geppert could "systematize the idea of astroculture," he could help move the field of space history beyond "well-worn space-policy and geopolitical studies." With the publication of Limiting Outer Space: Astroculture After Apollo and Militarizing Outer Space: Astroculture, Dystopia and the Cold War (coedited by Geppert, Daniel Brandau, and Tilmann Siebeneichner), the Astroculture trilogy is complete. While problems with coherence persist, Geppert has assembled a fascinating mosaic.

Following the lead of pioneering studies like De Witt Douglas Kilgore's Astrofuturism and Howard E. McCurdy's Space and the American Imagination, the Astroculture series analyzes space technology's sociocultural ramifications. Limiting Outer Space focuses on the 1970s, a decade that Martin Collins's thoughtful historiographical chapter characterizes as an "in-between decade" of crisis and realignment. Thirteen chapters grouped into three broad themes ("Navigating the 1970s," "Reconfiguring Imaginaries," and "Limiting Utopia") explore the changing meaning of space technology in a decade colored by a newfound awareness of globality, human interdependence, and "limits." The collection builds on Earthrise, Robert Poole's monograph [End Page 1253] analyzing the cultural implications of Apollo astronauts' photographs of the Earth, by exploring what contributor Florian Kläger calls "the Earthward Gaze": the idea that images of the Earth from space encapsulated an increasingly widespread sense of global interconnectedness and refocused attention away from the limitless space frontier toward a profoundly limited future on Earth. Poole draws on Stanley Kubrick's and Arthur C. Clarke's papers to analyze 2001: A Space Odyssey's vision of human nature and technological progress, Kläger reflects on how Anglophone novelists critiqued the Earthward Gaze's anthropocentric narcissism, and Luca Follis's chapter on the "imaginary" of international law argues that postcolonial states attempted to create a new legal entity of "humankind" to ensure that the fruits of the Space Age were distributed fairly.

While the frenzied competition of the 1960s Moon Race may have given way to a more subdued focus on long-duration spaceflight in low-Earth orbit and robotic planetary exploration, space enthusiasts adapted their dreams rather than discarding them. Peter J. Westwick's chapter on the origins of the Strategic Defense Initiative's missile defense program echoes W. Patrick McCray's 2012 monograph, The Visioneers, by detailing how space enthusiasts appropriated the Malthusian crisis prophesied in the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth report as a rallying cry for space colonization. There is a refreshing focus on material culture; in an era of reduced space budgets, speculative space stations—both in the form of the simulators interrogated by Regina Peldszus and in Lego's space-themed playsets that are engagingly analyzed by Thor Bjørnvig—became crucial sites of utopian expectation.

Militarizing Outer Space grapples with what it calls the "dark side" of astroculture—nightmares of space as an arena for conflict as well as the hardware, infrastructure, and organizational practices of military space utilization. Its fourteen chapters are grouped into four loosely themed subsections: "Embattling the Heavens," "Waging Future Wars," "Armoring Minds and Bodies...