Another Science Fiction: Advertising the Space Race 1957 - 1962By Megan Prelinger  •  Published 2010 by Blast Books"A brilliant tour through the iconography and literature of America's grandest corporate dreamtime, the Space Age" --William Gibson 

see http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/science/space/09space.html

Most Americans never saw these concoctions, but now they have been collected and dissected by Megan Prelinger, an independent historian and space buff, in a new book, “Another Science Fiction: Advertising the Space Race 1957-1962.” It is being published on May 25 by Blast Books.

Ms. Prelinger and her husband, Rick, operate the Prelinger Library, a private research library in San Francisco with a heavy emphasis on media, technology and landscape history.

In an e-mail message, Ms. Prelinger said she had grown up “on a cultural diet of science fiction and space,” memories of the moon landings and “Star Trek” merging in her mind. “As a result,” she said, “I grew up believing that I was a junior member of an advanced technological society.”

The book, she said, was inspired by a shipment of old publications to the library, including Aviation Week & Space Technology and Missiles and Rockets. “I little expected that the advertising in their pages would seize my attention more than the articles themselves,” she writes in the introduction to her book.