#FinishedReading this slim volume of early 50s #SciFi by #AEVanVogt . The goofy title and stories of visiting inhabitable Mars and Venus makes this look like super old fashioned stuff, but that, like much else in this book, is an illusion. This is pure Cold War paranoia, with disorienting temporal and character shifts, mind control drugs, sinister conspiracies etc, and in general this feels like a bridge to the high points of Philip K Dick. #Bookstodon@bookstodon
@Dhmspector@bookstodon no, I don't think it's propaganda (if anything is problematic by today's standards, it would be the absent / subservient role of women in this 1950s vision of the future), but it's drenched in concerns about nuclear annhiliation, the possible development of other novel weapons, espionage, etc.
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