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From their discovery in the 19th century to the dawn of the Nuclear Age, dinosaurs were seen in popular culture as ambassadors of the geological past and as icons of the "life through time" narrative of evolution. They took on a more foreboding character during the Cold War, serving as a warning to mankind with the advent of the hydrogen bomb. As fears of human extinction escalated during the ecological movement of the 1970s, dinosaurs communicated their metaphorical message of extinction, urging us from our destructive path. Using an eclectic variety of examples, this book outlines the three-fold "evolution" of dinosaurs and other prehistoric monsters in pop culture, from their poorly understood beginnings to the 21st century.
List of contents
Table of ContentsForeword by J.D. Lees
Introduction: Pop-Cultural Evolution of the Prehistoric Dino-Monster:
Meaning and Metaphor
Part I.¿Perpetuating the Life Through Geological Time Paradigm
One.¿Sir Humphry Davy's Volcanic Considerations of Life Through
Geological Time
Two.¿Popularizing the Life-Through-Time "Paleo-Novel"
Three.¿Henry Robert Knipe: A Forgotten Paleo-Popularizer
Four.¿Dinosaur Extinctions I: When a "dinosaur book" Isn't: Henry Fairfield Osborn's Origin and Evolution of Life (1917)
Five.¿Filmic Illustrations of Life Through Geological Time
Six.¿Lovecraft's Paleontological Time Travels
Part II.¿Doomsday Dinosaurs
Seven.¿Dinosaur Extinctions II: Volcanoes Presage Environmental Apocalypse
Eight.¿Sizing up Radiation's Unnatural Cold War Dangers
Nine.¿Nuclear Dragon: Godzilla and the Cold War-1954
Ten.¿Godzilla's Dinosaurian Origins
Eleven.¿Oxygen Destroyers: When Oceans Die
Twelve.¿"After and Before": Gorgo's Alternate Adventures
Thirteen.¿Prehistoric Life Spawns an Environmental Movement
Fourteen.¿Beyond the Smog Monster: Godzilla in the Anthropocene
Part III.¿Man and Dinosaur as One
Fifteen.¿Decade of the Dinosaur
Sixteen.¿Dinosaur Extinctions III: Warning from Space! Science Fiction Becomes Scientific
Seventeen.¿Shadow of Our Past: Evolution of the Beast
Eighteen.¿That First Intelligence
Nineteen.¿When Dinosauroids Speak!
Epilogue
Chapter Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Allen A. Debus, a retired environmental chemist, has long been infatuated with dinosaurs, paleontology, science fiction, Godzilla and King Kong. He has written several books addressing prehistoric creatures--both real and fictional--in popular culture, and attends Chicagoland's Wizard World and G-Fest. He lives in Hanover Park, Illinois.
