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War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination

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Shortly after H.G. Wells published War of the Worlds, in which Martians decimate humanity, an American author countered with a buoyantly optimistic sequel, Edison's Conquest of Mars--the great Thomas Edison invents a disintegrator beam which exterminates the aliens and unifies Earth behind America. This may seem a harmless fantasy, but as H. Bruce Franklin points out in War Stars, an eye-opening analysis of the superweapon in American culture, Edison's Conquest epitomizes a pattern of thought that has beguiled Americans since the 18th century: the belief that miraculous new weapons will somehow end war and bring global triumph to American ideals. ___Franklin begins his analysis with Robert Fulton, who first articulated this belief by claiming that an Age of Reason--including an end to ignorance, monarchy, and war--would be ushered in by his three purely "defensive" military inventions: the submarine, the torpedo, and the steam warship. Franklin then traces this treacherously seductive idea as it weaves through American culture in many forms: the flood of "future-war" novels appearing between 1880 and World War I, in which made-in-America superweapons (including the first nuclear arms) keep the world eternally safe for democracy; Billy Mitchell's use of newsreel and popular magazines to promote air power as a weapon for peace; the animated Disney feature "Victory Through Air Power," which concludes with Japan in ruins while "America the Beautiful" plays in the background; a 1940 novel in which America uses atomic bombs to win World War II and establish a Pax Americana along the lines of the 1946 Baruch Plan; and such material prducts as the intercontinental bomber and missile, the atomic and hydrogen bomb, and "defensive" space weapons guaranteed to make previous superweapons "impotent and obsolete." Franklin explores over two hundred movies, rediscovering obscure works that directly influenced later decision-making and reinterpreting such modern classics as Catch 22, Slaughterhouse Five, and Dr. Strangelove. More important, he shows how American cultural images shape the imagination and discourse responsible for the actual superweapons looming over human destiny. ___Vividly written and filled with provocative insights, War Stars offers a sweeping account of two centuries of American cultural and military history. This groundbreaking volume provides a new perspective on the debate over nuclear weapons, defense policy, and the future of the earth. Read more

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; First Edition (October 20, 1988)


Language ‏ : ‎ English


Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 288 pages


ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0195052951


ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 54


Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.31 pounds


Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.38 x 0.98 x 9.44 inches


Best Sellers Rank: #1,841,811 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #140 in Military Sciences #599 in Military Technology #827 in Nuclear Weapons & Warfare History (Books)


#140 in Military Sciences:


#599 in Military Technology:


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Top Amazon Reviews

    • My Favorite Book
This book is not known by many but is my favorite book. It is full of sci-fi and fiction over a 200 year span and relates it to scientific, political and military decisions. It is not well known but I would recommend everyone to read this book. From Robert Fulton's submarine to end all wars to Edison's suggestions to end all wars to Oppenheimer's nuclear weapon to end all wars all the way to Reagan's War Stars project to end wars by lasers from space. The problem? We as a society think building stronger weapons will lead to an end in war. A very bad thought process active in main stream society today that has been documented phenomenally by this book. If you want something new, get this book. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on November 12, 2011 by josh2021
    • Great update from the Oxford edition
The Oxford University Press edition, which became quite a classic with rave reviews from the New York Times, Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Noam Chomsky, etc., was published back in 1988, just prior to the official end of the Cold War in 1991. This expanded and updated edition is far more valuable today because it takes the story through the war that, not coincidentally, began in 1991 with the invasion of Iraq. Here the WMDs that were not found in Iraq give quite new meanings to "The Superweapon and the American Imagination," and the book now gives an amazing history of its subject from the 18th century into the 21st. It is no doubt Franklin's most important book, which is saying a lot. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on December 17, 2013 by H. B. Franklin
    • Thinking About the Unthinkable
Americans have long viewed as necessary to the survival of the United States an absolute protection from foreign attack. That was one of the reasons that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, was so troubling to the American psyche. This has prompted a never-ending search for security, and a corresponding search for a superweapon that would so demoralize an enemy that it would never attack the United States. From Robert Fulton’s Revolutionary War era submarine to such recent developments as Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), the United States has spared no expense and no measure of effort to ensure its safety. Bruce Franklin is a cultural historian, not a military of a policy analyst, so don’t look for reasoned discussion of the present-day implications of this quest for security. What he does do, however, is write a compelling cultural history of this aspect of America, demonstrating effectively how the U.S. has pursued the ultimate defensive weapon, one that would ensure that no one would ever want to attack this nation because of the dire consequences. I am most familiar with this story in relation to aerospace history, and indeed that is a major part of the story in the twentieth century. Indeed the airplane was supposed to make the nation invincible because no one would accept the dire losses that would result from any conflict. It would make war, in the words of many aviation enthusiasts, obsolete. Guess what, it didn’t. There is considerable literature, film, art, and the like that spoke to that belief. We have seen the same in the context of nuclear weapons, and their delivery methods by both airplanes and missiles, as something too terrible to contemplate. Cultural outpourings attest to American reactions to this situation in the era since World War II. Franklin is at his best in analyzing film—such as Fail-Safe, On the Beach, and Dr. Strangelove—that called attention to the disparity between the imagined future of the technocrats and the horrors of what might befall humanity. Of course, those might be viewed as “fifth column” efforts to weaken American resolve and strength, and in the 1950s the McCarthy “Red Scare” had elements of this as part of the agenda. Those clamoring for those superweapons, however, always viewed them as way to end all war and ensure the triumph to the American way of life. Central to this, especially in the post-World War II era, was the nuclear weapons delivered through the modern technology of ballistic missiles. Accordingly, for the first time in human history people hundreds or even thousands of miles removed from the battlefield were now living life as a target. This had a profound impact on American culture as everyone now lived on the receiving end of an attack from space. Franklin explores the manner in which society has dealt with the rising threat of attack from above over time. Thinking about the unthinkable became a central aspect of Franklin’s discussion of the super weapon. It changed not only the dynamic of international relations and cast a long shadow over every confrontation between first-world nations in the post-1945 era, but it also transformed American culture. Franklin published the first edition of this book in 1988, before the collapse of the Soviet Union. It received good reviews at the time, but the position of the champions of the superweapon in American culture found the greatest evidence of their belief with SDI and the Soviet collapse. Ronald Reagan, it seems, had won the Cold War after 40 years of stalemate. SDI and other military measures, in their minds, bankrupted the Soviet Union, despite the reality of many internal reasons ranging from economic crisis to imperial overstretch to the incursion of knowledge that a better future might be achieved by pursuing a different political agenda more in synchronicity with rather than in tension with the West. Indeed, it may be that Reagan’s most important role in helping to end the Cold War may have had nothing to do with the pursuit of a superweapon. Instead he was astute in allowing the internal situation in the Soviet Union to play out and was helpful by working with Gorbachev on arms control and the reduction of nuclear weapons. A new edition of WarStars was published in 2008. This is the version of the book that I read. It is a solid work, exploring the cultural history of the search for security by emphasizing “peace through strength.” It is an important study, worthy of anyone’s consideration. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on September 22, 2015 by Roger D. Launius

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