Remembering the Space Age. - Black Vault Radio Network (BVRN)

174 reMeMBerINg the SpaCe age
popular culture’s consideration of technological themes had counterparts
in political philosophy and religion, in literature and history. Major works
contributed thoughtful, yet highly diverse, elaborations of the cautions and
promises of the Space age. lewis Mumford’s book The Pentagon of Power, for
example, disparaged colonization of space as a waste of resources and, like
the building atomic weapons, a pathological use of technology. Zbigniew
Bzrezinski’s book Between Two Ages examined the dawn of the “technetronic
age,” a new era that would reorient the customary relationships of the industrial
age and bring inevitable dislocations and challenges. One of the most popular
science writers of the Space age, Carl Sagan, extolled space exploration but at
the same time warned that the siren song of “sweet” science and engineering
projects could also turn sinister if pursued with single-mindedness. these
works, and so many others, prompted broad consideration of the new role that
science and technology assumed in the Space age. 45
In religious thought, the “Is god dead?” controversy contained subtexts
about the spiritual meanings of the Space age. Was the total secularization of
the modern world bringing about the death of god “in our time, in our history,
in our existence?” the exaltation of science and rationality, many theologians
agreed, was helping to fuel a reexamination of the doctrine of god, which in
such a secular world stood as an almost empty and irrelevant idol. Still, might the
mysteries and infnity of the cosmos provide proof of a divine being with creative
powers of unfathomable magnitude and splendor? appearing in theological
treatises, in pulpits of every faith, and even on a highly controversial cover of
Time, the “death of god” controversy laced the Space age with momentous
philosophical questions about faith and its connection to social action. 46
Many of the most memorable portrayals of the Space age similarly centered
on the consequences of technology and technocracy. Stanley Kubrick’s flm
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)—developed along with a novel by arthur C.
Clarke that was based on some of Clarke’s earlier stories—presented the wonders
of space, the potential hazards of technology, and the inevitability of humans’
pursuit of new techniques and new modes of being. Norman Mailer in Of a Fire
on the Moon (1970), an account of the apollo 11 fight, stated “that he hardly
knew whether the Space program was the noblest expression of the twentieth
Century or the quintessential statement of our fundamental insanity.” 47 In 1985,
45. Kilgore, Astrofuturism, pp. 54-56; lewis Mumford, The Myth of the Machine: The Pentagon of
Power (New York, NY: harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1964); Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between
Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era (New York, NY: Viking press, 1970); Carl
Sagan, The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective (garden City, NY: anchor press,
1973), and ray Bradbury, arthur C. Clarke, Bruce C. Murray, and Carl Sagan, Mars and the
Mind of Man (New York, NY: harper and row, 1973).
46. “the ‘god Is dead’ Movement,” Time, (October 22, 1965); cover photo, Time, (april 8, 1966).
47. Norman Mailer, Of A Fire on the Moon (New York, NY: little Brown, 1969), p. 15.