ABSTRACT
The iconography of the twentieth century is not in the hands of fine artists alone. Technology in the visual arts is a case in point. The futurists, dadaists, and purists have, of course, symbolized aspects of the machine and industrial life, but so have a mass of popular artists and acknowledgment of their contribution is overdue. Advertisements cannot be left out of an appraisal of men and machines in twentieth-century art, nor can movies (for example, the FBI gadget thrillers, such as Walk East on Beacon and The Captive City), nor can science fiction. What is needed at the present time is descriptive study of particular aspects of the popular arts. Only after this has been done can we assess the status and role of the mass arts in our lives in the way that trigger-happy aesthetes and arm-chair educationalists are prematurely attempting. Here, an aspect of science fiction imagery is the topic. The field is a big one (it reaches back to 1926 when the first science fiction magazine was published), and touches all the mass media, so here it will only be possible to discuss the covers of some recent American pulp magazines.
