Militarizing Outer Space: Astroculture, Dystopia and the Cold War

Militarizing Outer Space explores the dystopian and destructive dimensions of the Space Age and challenges conventional narratives of a bipolar Cold War rivalry. Concentrating on weapons, warfare and vio lence, this provocative volume examines real and imagined endeavors of arming the skies and conquering the heavens. The third and final volume in the groundbreaking European Astroculture trilogy, Militarizing Outer Space zooms in on the interplay between security, technopolitics and knowledge from the 1920s through the 1980s. Often hailed as the site of heavenly utopias and otherworldly salvation, outer space transformed from a promised sanctuary to a present threat, where the battles of the future were to be waged. Astroculture proved instrumental in fathoming forms and functions of warfare's futures past, both on earth and in space. The allure of dominating outer space, the book shows, was neither limited to the early twenty-first century nor to current American space force rhetorics

Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- List of Figures -- Abbreviations -- Notes on Contributors -- Introduction -- Chapter 1 Spacewar! The Dark Side of Astroculture -- I 'Dual use' and other technopolitical fictions -- II 'High ground' and the Cold War in orbital space -- III Militant astroculture and fights of fancy -- IV Star Wars wars -- V Militarizing outer space -- Part I Embattling the Heavens -- Chapter 2 Cold War - But No War - in Space -- I Militarizing outer space, 1943-62 -- II The era of relative space stability, 1963-83 -- III Stability threatened and stability restored, 1983-89 -- IV Military space in a post-Cold War world -- Chapter 3 The Nuclear Roots of the Space Race -- I Military needs and spaceflight dreams -- II ICBMs around the world -- III Changing historiographical perceptions of ICBMs -- Chapter 4 West European Integration and the Militarization of Outer Space, 1945-70 -- I European astroculture and the political context of ELDO and ESRO -- II ESRO: the European approach to space and peace -- III ELDO and the military implications of dual-use technology -- IV Venus and Mars: the ambiguity of European space cooperation -- Part II Waging Future Wars -- Chapter 5 In Space, Violence Rules: Clashes and Conquests in Science-Fiction Cinema -- I Setting the scene: the 'non-place' fantasy -- II Dispelling the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie: the pre-canonical years -- III The classical age of the space science-fiction blockbuster: the search for the ultimate other -- IV Post-1957 science-fiction cinema: the danger from within -- V The end of the Cold War and the advent of space biopolitics -- VI Space militarization: from ideological critique to biopolitical spectacle -- Chapter 6 C. S. Lewis and the Moral Threat of Space Exploration, 1938-64.