Rockets and Ray Guns: The Sci-Fi Science of the Cold War
About this audiobook
The Cold War saw scientists in East and West racing to create amazing new technologies, the like of which the world had never seen. Yet not everyone was taken by surprise. From super-powerful atomic weapons to rockets and space travel, readers of science fiction (SF) had seen it all before.
Sometimes reality lived up to the SF vision, at other times it didn’t. The hydrogen bomb was as terrifyingly destructive as anything in fiction, while real-world lasers didn’t come close to the promise of the classic SF ray gun. Nevertheless, when the scientific Cold War culminated in the Strategic Defense Initiative of the 1980s, it was so science-fictional in its aspirations that the media dubbed it “Star Wars.”
This entertaining account, offering a plethora of little known facts and insights from previously classified military projects, shows how the real-world science of the Cold War followed in the footsteps of SF—and how the two together changed our perception of both science and scientists, paving the way for the world we live in today.
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About the author
Andrew May is an author who has been working as a freelance writer and defense consultant. He obtained a PhD in astrophysics from the University of Manchester and is an experienced professional with a career spanning academia, government, and private industry. He has written both authoritatively and entertainingly on the physical sciences, military technology, British history, science fiction, New Age beliefs, and the paranormal. He is the author of several titles, including Pseudoscience and Science Fiction, The Telescopic Tourist’s Guide to the Moon, and Rockets and Ray Guns: The Sci-Fi Science of the Cold War, among others.
Grover Gardner is an award-winning narrator with over a thousand titles to his credit. Named one of the “Best Voices of the Century” and a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine, he has won three prestigious Audie Awards, was chosen Narrator of the Year for 2005 by Publishers Weekly, and has earned more than thirty Earphones Awards.
