Since its beginnings, the U.S. space program has been motivated by a highly romantic dream," writes Howard E. McCurdy, a professor of public affairs at American University, in the introduction to his latest book, Space and the American Imagination. With its engaging cover and the author's promise to examine how "the rise of the U.S. space program was due in part to a concerted effort by writers of popular science and science fiction," the book seems to offer readers a study of how fantastic space imagery has affected space policy and NASA's direction. However, instead of discussing the positive influence of space imagery, McCurdy uses examples culled from science fiction novels, magazine illustrations, film, and television, to criticize the image-makers for creating impossible-to-fulfill fantasies that politicians and NASA can never realize.

The author has zeroed in on some of this terrain before; NASA was the subject of McCurdy's two earlier books, Inside NASA: High Technology and Organizational Change in the U.S. Space Program and The Space Station Decision: Incremental Politics and Technological Choice. The twist offered here is a "cultural studies" emphasis in place of the socio-political exegesis offered in those earlier studies.