Exploring the Next Frontier

Vietnam, NASA, Star Trek and Utopia in 1960s and 70s American Myth and History

Matthew Wilhelm Kapell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138188570
• eBook ISBN: 9781317281436
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Modern History
• Index: History

The 1960s and early 70s saw the evolution of Frontier Myths even as scholars were renouncing the interpretive value of myths themselves. Works like Joe Haldeman's The Forever War exemplified that rejection using his experiences during the Vietnam War to illustrate the problematic consequences of simple mythic idealism. Simultaneously, Americans were playing with expanded and revised versions of familiar Frontier Myths, though in a contemporary context, through NASA's lunar missions, Star Trek, and Gerard K. O'Neill's High Frontier.

This book examines the reasons behind the exclusion of Frontier Myths to the periphery of scholarly discourse, and endeavors to build a new model for understanding their enduring significance. This model connects NASA's failed attempts to recycle earlier myths, wholesale, to Star Trek 's revision of those myths and rejection of the idea of a frontier paradise, to O'Neill's desire to realize such a paradise in Earth's orbit. This new synthesis defies the negative connotations of Frontier Myths during the 1960s and 70s and attempts to resuscitate them for relevance in the modern academic context.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Epigraph
• 1 Introduction: 1969 and an American Mythos
• 2 Paradigms Lost and Paradigms Regained: A Mythography of the Lost Frontier
• 3 Vietnam, The Forever War, and the Shattering of American Myth
• 4 Technological Triumph, Mythological Miasma: NASA, the Moon, and Transforming Mythos into Logos
• 5 The Rejection of Paradise: Star Trekand the Final Frontier
• 6 The High Frontier of Gerard K. O’Neill: An Endless Frontier Utopia in Orbit
• 7 Conclusion: A Continuing Mythic Significance
• Index