Monsters in the Machine

Science Fiction Film and the Militarization of America after World War II

University Press of Mississippi 2016 Hb, 240pp, illus, bib, ind, $60.00, ISBN 9781496805652

Steffen Hantke’s books include Conspiracy and Paranoia in Contemporary American Fiction

and Horror Film: Creating and

Marketing Fear. The science fiction films of the 1950s and 1960s have long been accepted as allegories for Cold War paranoia about nuclear war and Soviet aggression in Europe. In this excellent text, the author makes a strong case that they were as much reflections of America’s memories of WWII, the emerging military-industrial complex and American entanglement in Korea and other post-colonial conflicts. The purpose, according to Hantke, was to portray the US military as an inescapable presence in American life in an age of perpetual mobilisation ... America was never going back to life before the war.