ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 draws from recent work in cultural geography, considering the ways in which imaginative representations and lived experience of outer-space phenomena were calibrated in popular culture in the post-war period. Four case studies are investigated: Firstly, the television serial Quatermass, specifically the three BBC series of the 1950s, The Quatermass Experiment, Quatermass II and Quatermass and the Pit. Here, while paying attention to the life-world of the screenwriter Nigel Kneale, amid broader social experiences of the Second World War, themes are identified that frame space exploration as an uncertain endeavour, eliciting expressions of fear, awe and the unknown. Similar concepts are approached in the second case study, which is the arrival of the UFO phenomenon in Britain. Here, the first UK government response to UFO sightings is examined, conducted in secret by members of the official ‘Flying Saucer Working Party’ in 1950, while some of the popular aspects of the phenomenon are also examined, including the formation of the British UFO Research Association. It is suggested that UFO sightings became an integral part of post-war British cultures of outer space, notwithstanding debates about their veracity. One participant in such debates, the astronomer Patrick Moore, forms the nexus of the third case study, which examines Moore's involvement with popular media in the 1950s and 1960s, specifically the BIS publication Spaceflight and the BBC television programme The Sky at Night. Together, these works helped to promote the science of outer space to a growing audience in the UK. The fourth and final case study in this chapter concerns the early science-fictional writings of Arthur C Clarke, who became one of Britain's most prominent proponents of space exploration, was connected closely to the BIS, and was someone who worked across the two worlds of science fiction and astronautical theory in this period. In examining these case studies, this chapter argues that concepts of space and place were instrumental in understanding and communicating varied cultures of outer space in these contexts, including earthly, aerial, domestic and exploratory spaces.
