Welcome To Mars
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Product Description
A story of weird science, strange events and even stranger beliefs, set in an age when the possibilities for human development seemed almost limitless, Welcome to Mars offers a fascinating, detailed chronology of where it all went wrong.
In his own inimitable style, Ken Hollings draws upon newspaper accounts, advertising campaigns, declassified government archives, old movies and newsreels from the period to depict an unsettled time in which the layout of suburbia reflected atomic bombing strategies, bankers and movie stars experimented with hallucinogens, brainwashing was just another form of interior decoration and strange lights in the sky were taken very seriously indeed. After Welcome to Mars, you ll never be able to think about the 1950s the same way again.
In his own inimitable style, Ken Hollings draws upon newspaper accounts, advertising campaigns, declassified government archives, old movies and newsreels from the period to depict an unsettled time in which the layout of suburbia reflected atomic bombing strategies, bankers and movie stars experimented with hallucinogens, brainwashing was just another form of interior decoration and strange lights in the sky were taken very seriously indeed. After Welcome to Mars, you ll never be able to think about the 1950s the same way again.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
The book is really great for those who are interested in culture in the very fist place. To me, the space aspect comes the second; however it is for sure the ground on which the book is essentially built up. It explores the various areas in space and its roots in or reflections on culture. Hollings reveals 'dark' secrets which are unfamiliar to masses with his amazing writing skills. Hollings genius is sensible between the lines and the way he structures his arguments and he jumps between a variety of topic, all interconnected within the body of the book. A pleasure to read...
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If you are a fan of The Illuminatus Trilogy and/or Adam Curtis' work on television (Century Of Self, Power Of Nightmares, The Trap), then you'll be on familiar territory with Ken Hollings' 'Welcome To Mars'.
Welcome To Mars examines the period immediately after WWII, and the American Miltary/Industrial complex's dark mirror of the burgeoning science fiction which was prevalent in the mainstream consciousness of the era. Hollings draws dark parrallels which takes in the 'Red Terror' undercurrents of Saucermen movies, the terrible and true-life tales of the Military/Industrial complex, utopian social engineering and their nutty (and invariably unethical) masterminds, mind control, dreams of life on other planets etc.
Slanted and selective in its view of history (as with Curtis' work), Hollings weaves a captivating and fantastically subversive take on post-war America. Tip-toeing carefully through the muddier parts of American history, Hollings skillfully navigates away from conspiracy theory territory (dont worry, no shape-changing lizards here!), essaying some of the more extreme ideas and experiments borne out of the paranoia of the era. Unbeleivably, nearly all of which are a matter of public record. Less a history, more of a meditation on America's post war empire building days (with one eye gazing at the stars).
Highly reccomended, especially if you can keep your wits, perspective and sense of humour around subject matters like these!
Welcome To Mars examines the period immediately after WWII, and the American Miltary/Industrial complex's dark mirror of the burgeoning science fiction which was prevalent in the mainstream consciousness of the era. Hollings draws dark parrallels which takes in the 'Red Terror' undercurrents of Saucermen movies, the terrible and true-life tales of the Military/Industrial complex, utopian social engineering and their nutty (and invariably unethical) masterminds, mind control, dreams of life on other planets etc.
Slanted and selective in its view of history (as with Curtis' work), Hollings weaves a captivating and fantastically subversive take on post-war America. Tip-toeing carefully through the muddier parts of American history, Hollings skillfully navigates away from conspiracy theory territory (dont worry, no shape-changing lizards here!), essaying some of the more extreme ideas and experiments borne out of the paranoia of the era. Unbeleivably, nearly all of which are a matter of public record. Less a history, more of a meditation on America's post war empire building days (with one eye gazing at the stars).
Highly reccomended, especially if you can keep your wits, perspective and sense of humour around subject matters like these!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In this book Ken Hollings examines several key strands in American culture immediately following the Second World War: the fear of nuclear annihilation, the proximity of space (taking the form of flying saucer panics, alien contact fantasies and the more mundane space race against the Soviet Union), the growth of suburbia and the studies of human consciousness that included LSD research and investigations of "brain-washing". As well as narrating events in these areas during the late 40s and the 1950s, he examines the way in which a society's concerns and self-image were fed back to it through the medium of popular culture, in particular science-fiction B-movies (the image of the feedback loop, of course, itself derives from the new science of cybernetics).
There are connections between these spheres, of course: to pluck one example from many, the developer of some of the earliest planned suburban communities had begun his career building secret housing, not appearing on any maps, for workers in the atom bomb programme. Personnel appear and reappear in the different strands of the story to the extent that it can be difficult to keep track, which is perhaps the point. Hollings' modus operandi is the rapid shuffle between narratives, the jump cut that juxtaposes two strands: his chronological framework commits him to this rapid switching, but it is also one of the means whereby he builds up a convincing structure. In the end, this is perhaps not so much history, or at least orthodox "balanced" history (in which one would be required to look more closely at how representative certain figures actually were), as one history, one possible use of the facts, a paranoid riff in which images from reality are selected and juxtaposed in cut-up fashion. Hence the Cabaret Voltaire comparison: both subject matter and technique are closely analogous to the Sheffield Dadaists' work in music.
The caveats about the extent to which this is "history" are not to say, I hasten to add, that what Hollings tells us is untrue - and there are some stories in here that make the blood boil even without the addition of sinister conspiratorial overtones, such as the use of disabled children as guinea-pigs in the ingestion of radioactive substances, or the work of Dr Ewan Cameron (and his British associate William Walters Sargent) in attempting to wipe and reprogramme the human mind, using mental hospital patients as raw material (both men shared what could be described as a robust approach to patient rights, something that Sargent's personal papers, deposited in a public archive and freely available for consultation, bear out). However, history as understood in the academy is not really the point here: the objective is a forensic analysis of a culture, western scientific capitalist consumerism; the way in which, as Ballard told us all along, the public domain is a reflection of inner wants and fears, the stated justification for public actions often a long way from the real motivation; and the way in which this environment shaped the children who were born into it and grew up to be the sixties generation. The experience of all this is rather reminiscent of reading Pynchon's fictions (a comparison Hollings himself draws in the introduction) - a bewildering web of connections, forever on the verge of taking shape and resolving themselves into a clear picture of the big conspiracy, but never quite doing so. Non-fiction novel, paranoid history, prose Cabaret Voltaire LP: read it yourself and decide for yourself (if "they" haven't already planted in your head what they want you to believe....).
There are connections between these spheres, of course: to pluck one example from many, the developer of some of the earliest planned suburban communities had begun his career building secret housing, not appearing on any maps, for workers in the atom bomb programme. Personnel appear and reappear in the different strands of the story to the extent that it can be difficult to keep track, which is perhaps the point. Hollings' modus operandi is the rapid shuffle between narratives, the jump cut that juxtaposes two strands: his chronological framework commits him to this rapid switching, but it is also one of the means whereby he builds up a convincing structure. In the end, this is perhaps not so much history, or at least orthodox "balanced" history (in which one would be required to look more closely at how representative certain figures actually were), as one history, one possible use of the facts, a paranoid riff in which images from reality are selected and juxtaposed in cut-up fashion. Hence the Cabaret Voltaire comparison: both subject matter and technique are closely analogous to the Sheffield Dadaists' work in music.
The caveats about the extent to which this is "history" are not to say, I hasten to add, that what Hollings tells us is untrue - and there are some stories in here that make the blood boil even without the addition of sinister conspiratorial overtones, such as the use of disabled children as guinea-pigs in the ingestion of radioactive substances, or the work of Dr Ewan Cameron (and his British associate William Walters Sargent) in attempting to wipe and reprogramme the human mind, using mental hospital patients as raw material (both men shared what could be described as a robust approach to patient rights, something that Sargent's personal papers, deposited in a public archive and freely available for consultation, bear out). However, history as understood in the academy is not really the point here: the objective is a forensic analysis of a culture, western scientific capitalist consumerism; the way in which, as Ballard told us all along, the public domain is a reflection of inner wants and fears, the stated justification for public actions often a long way from the real motivation; and the way in which this environment shaped the children who were born into it and grew up to be the sixties generation. The experience of all this is rather reminiscent of reading Pynchon's fictions (a comparison Hollings himself draws in the introduction) - a bewildering web of connections, forever on the verge of taking shape and resolving themselves into a clear picture of the big conspiracy, but never quite doing so. Non-fiction novel, paranoid history, prose Cabaret Voltaire LP: read it yourself and decide for yourself (if "they" haven't already planted in your head what they want you to believe....).
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