Perfectibility and Techno-Optimism in the Pulp Era

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the pulp era (c. 1926-1940) of American science fiction and explores how a distinct techno-optimism dominated this era. This pulp era optimism is best exemplified by the influential editor Hugo Gernsback and the magazines he started: Amazing Stories and Wonder Stories. However, this chapter argues that many writers who appeared in Gernsback’s magazines stridently condemned the automobiles of their own time. Where their technological optimism manifests itself, then, is in their belief that the automobile is not worthy of abandonment and that a certain perfectibility resides in the machine.