Title
Space Weapons: Science Fiction and Reality
Document Type
Presentation
Publication Date
12-3-2010
Abstract
My talk overviews the Cold War history of space weapons, and then moves on to examine how those on both sides of the contemporary debate over the weaponization of space tended to 'interpellate' space warfare through the lens of science fiction - and the attendant allure of Bruce Franklin’s ‘super-weapon’ - substituting rhetoric and visual metaphor for a serious examination of how, exactly, one would appropriate outer space. As it turns out, of course, the economic and scientific arguments largely rule out the use of ‘super-weapons’ in space.
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