In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

INTRODUCTION “TheHopeofTodayandtheRealityofTomorrow”:Popular Science,PopularCulture,andScienceFiction Writing a never-completed autobiography in 1927, the physicist and rocket scientist Robert Goddard recalled a pivotal sequence of events earlier in his life. In January 1898 he encountered science fiction stories for the first time when the Boston Post ran serialized adaptations, first of H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds and then of Garrett P. Serviss’s Edison’s Conquest of Mars.1 Both stories “gripped my imagination tremendously,” he remembered; “Wells’s true psychology made the thing very vivid, and possible ways and means of accomplishing the physical marvels set forth kept me busy thinking.” Later in the fall of 1899 he discovered his life’s true calling. “I climbed a tall cherry tree at the back of the barn,” he wrote, recounting the seasonal setting. “It was one of the quiet, colorful afternoons of sheer beauty which we have in October in New England.” He recalled, “I imagined how wonderful it would be to make some device which had even the possibility of ascending to Mars and how it would look on a small scale, if sent from the meadow at my feet. I was a different boy when I descended the tree, for existence at last seemed very purposive.” Goddard also remembered recognizing the utility of scientific principles. “I started making wooden models [that] gave negative results, and I began to think there might be something after all to Newton’s laws,” he wrote. “[His] third law was accordingly tested and was verified conclusively. If a way to navigate space were to be discovered—or invented,” he realized, “it would be the result of a knowledge of physics and mathematics.”2 For Goddard, the events connected fiction and science and gave them direction: possibility’s purpose was its eventual realization. “Just as in the sciences we have learned that we are too ignorant safely to pronounce 2 Introduction anything impossible,” he declared a few years later in his high school graduation oration, “so for the individual . . . no one can predict to what heights of wealth, fame, or usefulness he may rise until he has honestly endeavored.” One “should derive courage from the fact that all sciences have been, at some time, in the same condition,” he explained, “and that it has often proved true that the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow.”3 Throughout his life Goddard maintained the faith of this conviction. He read science fiction, rereading War of the Worlds annually at Christmas; he privately observed the “Anniversary Day” of his interest in spaceflight; and he pursued a career in physics and mathematics to advance its dream and hope. Each and all of these activities were part of his scientific practice; each and all were necessary toward realizing its imagined possibility.4 Science in early twentieth-century America, however, was not solely an individual or private affair. Goddard discovered its broader situation in 1919 when reactions to his work transformed him in the public eye from a shy, modest professor of physics to the internationally celebrated inventor of the “moon rocket.” That year he published “A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes ,” in which he discussed the mathematics and technical requirements to use rockets for what he considered the modest and achievable task of scientifically exploring the upper atmosphere—the “extreme altitudes” of his title.5 What caught public attention, however, was not Goddard’s logic and calculation but his brief speculation that a flash-powder experiment might verify that a rocket had reached such extreme altitudes as to impact the moon.6 Newspapers across the country covering his article ran headlines about rockets to the moon ranging from the New York Times’s announcements, “Believes Rocket Can Reach Moon” and “Aim to Reach Moon with New Rocket,” to the Boston American’s proclamation, “Modern Jules Verne Invents Rocket to Reach Moon.”7 The Bronx Exposition, Inc., offered its Starlight Amusement Park to be the “special starting point” for the moon rocket.8 More than a hundred people from around the world offered to undertake the journey, including Capt. Claude R. Collins, a World War I pilot and president of the Aviators’ Club of Pennsylvania; Miss Ruth Phillips from Kansas City, Missouri , who offered to accompany him; and another volunteer team of Capt. Charles N. Fitzgerald and Miss Vanora Guth of New York, who later entered into a partnership with Captain Collins and Miss Phillips.9 An enterprising publicity agent...

Share