ABSTRACT
This chapter describes and evaluates the varied public responses to SDI, concentrating on the mass media, anti-nuclear activism, and popular culture. It argues that after a prolonged phase of mocking the premise of SDI, the tone changed as it became clear that SDI was a serious and sustained international research and development project. Yet, anti-nuclear groups were slow to react to SDI because they were spread thin across multiple nuclear issues in the early 1980s, not least the arrival of cruise missiles on British soil in the same year that SDI was announced. This chapter also argues that SDI - initially publicly imagined as an impossible fantasy project - became a useful ‘sociotechnical imaginary’ for Britain as a nuclear power. This imaginary recast nuclear morality and downplayed the aggressive reality of nuclear brinkmanship.
