{"title":"Fred Nadis","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"star-settlers-book-fred-nadis-9781643134482","title":"Star Settlers","description":"The story behind the elite scientists, technologists, SF enthusiasts, and billionaires who believe that humanity’s destiny is to populate the stars . . .  Does humanity have a destiny “in the stars?” Should a species triggering massive extinctions on its own planet instead stay put? This new book traces the waxing and waning of interest in space settlement through the decades, and offers a journalistic tour through the influential subculture attempting to shape a multiplanetary future.    What motivates figures such as billionaires Elon Musk and Yuri Milner? How important have science fiction authors and filmmakers been in stirring enthusiasm for actual space exploration and settlement? Is there a coherent motivating philosophy and ethic behind the spacefaring dream?    Star Settlers offers both a historical perspective and a journalistic window into a peculiar subculture packed with members of the scientific, intellectual, and economic elite. This timely work captures the extra-scientific zeal for space travel and settlement, places it in its historical context, and tackles the somewhat surreal conceptions underlying the enterprise and prognoses for its future.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49581472284945,"sku":"GOR013581699","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49737799336209,"sku":"NGR9781643134482","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1643134485.jpg?v=1750927517"},{"product_id":"wonder-shows-book-fred-nadis-9780813535159","title":"Wonder Shows","description":"Imagine a stage full of black cats emitting electrical sparks, a man catching bullets with his teeth, or an evangelist jumping on a transformer to shoot bolts of lightning through his fingertips. These and other wild schemes were part of the repertoire of showmen who traveled from city to city, making presentations that blended science with myth and magic.   In Wonder Shows, Fred Nadis offers a colorful history of these traveling magicians, inventors, popular science lecturers, and other presenters of “miracle science” who revealed science and technology to the public in awe-inspiring fashion. The book provides an innovative synthesis of the history of performance with a wider study of culture, science, and religion from the antebellum period to the present.   It features a lively cast of characters, including electrical “wizards” Nikola Tesla and Thomas Alva Edison, vaudeville performers such as Harry Houdini, mind readers, UFO cultists, and practitioners of New Age science. All of these performers developed strategies for invoking cultural authority to back their visions of science and progress. The pseudo-science in their wonder shows helped promote a romantic worldview that called into question the absolute authority of scientific materialism while reaffirming the importance of human spirituality. Nadis argues that the sensation that these entertainers provided became an antidote to the alienation and dehumanization that accompanied the rise of modern America.   Although most recent defenders of science are prone to reject wonder, considering it an ally of ignorance and superstition, Wonder Shows demonstrates that the public’s passion for magic and meaning is still very much alive. Today, sales continue to be made and allegiances won based on illusions that products are unique, singular, and at best, miraculous. Nadis establishes that contemporary showmen, corporate publicists, advertisers, and popular science lecturers are not that unlike the magicians and mesmerists of years ago.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49999534915857,"sku":"CIN0813535158G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51855379464465,"sku":"CIN0813535158VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0813535158.jpg?v=1761391041"},{"product_id":"man-from-mars-book-fred-nadis-9780399160547","title":"The Man from Mars","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50349950632209,"sku":"CIN039916054XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50405839896849,"sku":"CIN039916054XVG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/039916054X.jpg?v=1751229111"},{"product_id":"man-form-mars-book-fred-nadis-9780399168840","title":"The Man Form Mars","description":"The rollicking, critically acclaimed true story of Ray Palmer, the legendary \u003ci\u003eAmazing Stories\u003c\/i\u003e editor who ruled over America's sci-fi, fantasy, and supernatural pulp journals in the mid-twentiety century and brought flying saucers, men in black, and government cover-ups into our minds.\u003cbr\u003e 'Palmer could not have asked for a more sympathetic chronicler, or a better one, than Fred Nadis. His prose and his pronouncements are everything Palmer's practically never were- restrained, nuanced, intelligently considered. Nadis has a great story, and he relates it exquisitely.' \u003cb\u003eJerome Clark, \u003ci\u003eFortean Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 'Fred Nadis's insightful biography demonstrates that Palmer is significant as well as intriguing.' \u003cb\u003eMichael Saler, \u003ci\u003eThe\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eWashington Pos\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003et\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e '\u003c\/i\u003eThe author paints a story of a larger-than-life writer, editor, and publisher whose unorthodox methods propelled a nascent genre of tales, conspiracies, and other worlds into high visibility.' \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e 'The sci-fi pulps made a lasting imprint, as Fred Nadis shows in his entertaining \u003ci\u003eThe Man from Mars\u003c\/i\u003e . . . . Mr. Nadis does not take sides in what was once a civil war among the fans but reminds them that there was more than one mighty editior back in the Golden Age.'\u003cb\u003eTom Shippey, \u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 'One of science fiction's greatest gadflies gets his due in this lively and entertaining biography.' \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e 'Lucidly written and unfailingly lively, \u003ci\u003eThe Man from Mars\u003c\/i\u003e is a biography worthy of its subject. Nadis never stoops to lazy hyperbole . . . but maintains his balance and his sense of nuance.' \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eFate\u003c\/i\u003e magazine\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51002115129617,"sku":"NIN9780399168840","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51825682153745,"sku":"CIN0399168842G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52489242738961,"sku":"NLS9780399168840","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0399168842.jpg?v=1751229127"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-fred-nadis.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}