Welcome to Mars: Politics, Pop Culture, and Weird Science in 1950s America

The cover of WELCOME TO MARS is proof positive that a picture can be worth a thousand words. On the copyright page we learn that one Jasmine Hromjak did the Cover Design - and what a potent, poetic, evocative, mind-boggling, nostalgic and so very humorous cover it is! Love, love, love the cover! It speaks in a UFO sighting instant of a time and place and mania and mind-set - and anyone with a smidgin of knowledge about America and the cultural and political climate of the '50's would be hard-pressed not to smile and also shiver some when looking upon this book's amazing cover. I only wish the book itself were commensurate to its cover.Being a baby boomer myself, I was familiar with a great many of the topics covered in Ken Hollings' book - mainly those dealing with UFO sightings and the sci-fi films of the decade. The author assigns each chapter to a year in covering American cultural, political and scientific happenings, as the book's subtitle indicates. While the chronological deluge of people, places and things held interest it did so only up to a point: the point where it seemed I was reading a more densely packed "birthday" card, the kind that lists all the happenings in the year you were born, from the miraculous to the mundane. So that is what this book became, in the end. It is a blink-and-miss it approach that over time grows exceedingly tedious. A tidal wave washing everything and anything up on the shore of a reader's scrutiny. I dare say, if someone knows next to nil about this seismic decade in American history, the book may seem to be written in Greek. I know that if one never saw the films discussed, the discussions would by-and-large seem decidedly confusing, pointless and vague. I would guess Hollings is after both style and substance - but the substance of the book, in the end, becomes its style - and the adrenaline rush of raw data with which the book begins ultimately wears itself out rather quickly, like an undisciplined boxer giving too much too soon and exhausting himself for later rounds and thereby losing the bout. The fact that some of the info Hollings serves is tainted doesn't make matters any better.A few examples of errors I picked out of the whirlwind read: on page 76 Hollings claims that the reason Scotty, the newspaper reporter in THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, fails to photograph the electrocution of "The Thing" is due to "some unconscious act of clemency." You see, in Hollings' tortured read of things, he believes Scotty feels a need for some sort of "clemency" because of the imminent executions of the actual atomic spies, the Rosenbergs. According to Hollings, Scotty also stops dead in his recounting of the notorious photo shot by a reporter with a camera strapped to his ankle, a picture of the electric chair execution of Ruth Snyder in 1927. The reason Scotty stops relating the story of the earlier execution is because he knows "history is about to repeat itself" via the Rosenbergs. See what I mean by tortured? Hollings is just trying too hard to find cross-cultural connections that just are not there. Truth is, Scotty doesn't continue with the Snyder story because the Thing is drawing nearer to the final confrontation with the Earthlings. And the reason Scotty doesn't photograph the electrocution of the Thing isn't due to any act of clemency at all! Simple truth is..Scotty faints! His failure to get a single photograph of the Thing is a running joke throughout the entire film.Here is another: on page 244, Hollings says that Rod Serling got the inspiration for the TWILIGHT ZONE debut episode "Where is Everybody?" from taking a "walk across an empty sound stage." Actually, it was a walk through an empty village set at the back lot of a movie studio. This isn't my being picayune. If you are familiar with this TZ episode, you will appreciate the difference between an empty stage and an empty village. Another: on page 240-41, Hollings misrepresents William Castle's THE TINGLER "as the first movie ever made about LSD" and that because of its subject "the kids in the Midnight Spook Pit are just going to love it." While it is true that this movie shows the first LSD trip in mainstream film - a trip taken by none other than Vincent Price - to say that the movie itself is "the first movie ever made about LSD" is simply disingenuous. Hollings also gets it wrong when he writes that the Price character takes his trip whilst alone, while two other characters are off on a date. In truth, the assistant and girlfriend watch the entire trip from the other side of a lab door. On page 241, Hollings totally misrepresents the one touch of color in the otherwise black and white film. In the film, the blood in a bathtub and running from a sink faucet are red. The color in this sequence - wherein a man is trying to scare his wife to death - has absolutely nothing to do with a LSD trip. To hear Hollings tell it, though, is quite astonishing: "Shot in lurid color while the rest of the film remains in dreary black and white, the hallucination sequences look like a heart-stopping, grotesque, zonked-out parody of THE WIZARD OF OZ." He goes on waxing erroneously: "William Castle takes teenage America for a ride through the chemically enhanced brain; and the boys and girls all seem to like what they see." And more nonsense: "William Castle is the favorite uncle of America's healthy, socialized youth. With the aid of rubber fright masks and bathtubs filled to the brim with fake blood, he is now introducing his kids to the Wonderful World of LSD." If I were a member of the Castle family, I would probably sue because none of what Hollings says about Castle or THE TINGLER is true.Just as it isn't true that - according to our author on page 249 - "debris thought to be from the crashed Roswell saucer was first examined" at Fort Hood, Texas. Fort Worth Army Air Field, yes, but not Fort Hood. But it seems our author is trying to connect Elvis - who completed his basic training at Fort Hood - to the UFO in Roswell to Lee Harvey Oswald and the Texas military base in order to make some sweeping statement about American culture and craziness. But the connection just isn't truly there, but only in the author's overwhelmed head. So after finding these mistakes relating to things I know about, I uncomfortably wonder what else Ken Hollings got wrong in his book. And in reading a book dealing in large part with the paranoia of a time and place, feeling paranoid in any degree with regards to the veracity of what one is reading...is just not a good way to feel.

This book is not a commentary or review of the 1950's politics, pop culture and weird science of the 1950's as the title declares. It is, in fact, an incoherent mess of jumbled up conspiracy theories presented by an extremely biased (and not completely truthful) UFO true believer. I got very little out of the jumbled up ideas presented here, but what I did get was that the author isn't exactly interested in the truth. One example of many:On page 58, when speaking of Edward Hunter, the author states: "Hunter, a CIA propaganda operative working undercover as a journalist..."This is not just an omission of facts, this is a flat out lie. Hunter did work for the OSS (which became the CIA) before he became a reporter and author. But there is zero evidence he worked for the CIA as an undercover journalist. This is the same pure propaganda that you find on internet conspiracy web sites that feature stories that are heavy on speculation and short on facts. The entire book is written with this mindset and is really the only cohesive part of the entire thing. The author makes huge leaps trying to connect ideas and omits important information in order to paint the well worn picture of the evil government of the 1950's. I won't go to deep into the very bizarre sexual conclusions the author makes in some of the text except to say there's one particular spot that sticks out about the Roswell Alien's mouths being the "most public and most intimate of cavities, it's contents remaining essentially sexual in nature." Yeah...ok.And there are more sexual oddities dotted in the text that have no connection to the subject and make no sense whatsoever. I don't need a book about the 1950's to paint the time as a real life Disney Land world of tomorrow but equally I don't need it to be about Aliens visiting our planet, government cover ups and evil men wringing their hands ready to exploit the imbecilic public. I just want facts presented as unbiased as humanly possible. This isn't it. If you like books that confirm your want to believe the American government is filled with NOTHING but evil individuals and that Aliens have visited earth, then this is definitely the book for you. You'll still have to be adept at glossing over half baked connections to ideas but you'll like it overall. If you are normal and appreciate things like fact and well written commentary then you'll hate this book. And you'll feel like you've been taken if you thought it was going to actually be about what the title claimed it would be about.

...in many ways. The author very correctly has identified an enormously important and influential side of U.S. history that has been underappreciated and underexplored. There is no doubt that American culture was massively influenced by the off-center and often bizarre phenomena explored in these pages. I evolved in this period of history, and clearly am a product of these socio-cultural vectors.Frankly, these influences are what made this country great, unique and special and,now that they are gone, I feel sadly that the U.S.A. has grown impoverished on many levels.The author is at once a highly-skilled expositor with a disciplined, formal, almost didactic style that is curiously offset by an intermittent lack of focus and a (rather delightful) tendency to wander conceptually. If I'm not mistaken, he is an Englishman, and this sort of eccentricity is respected and admired across the pond as an authentic school of the literary arts. I fancy this sort of bold balancing act, and my library contains many examples of it, but it may not be everyone's cup of tea.I feel that this book is intended as a genuine scholastic effort and fully deserves recognition at that level. The inherent "trippy" quality is nothing more than a reflection of the subject matter itself. Mr. Hollings is a very intelligent historian with the sort of keen grasp of events that eludes the more stoic, monolithic researchers. When it counts, he substantiates his claims wholly and cannot be denied.

Interesting reading if you love 1950's Sci. Fi., as I do. I grew up prior to the "pre-code Horror" stamp put on comic books, starting in 1955. Yes, EC comic books crossed the line, but tell that to a 12 year old! E'nuf said.

If you are a fan of The Illuminatus Trilogy and/or Adam Curtis' work on television (Century Of Self, Power Of Nightmares, The Trap), then you'll be on familiar territory with Ken Hollings' 'Welcome To Mars'.Welcome To Mars examines the period immediately after WWII, and the American Miltary/Industrial complex's dark mirror of the burgeoning science fiction which was prevalent in the mainstream consciousness of the era. Hollings draws dark parrallels which takes in the 'Red Terror' undercurrents of Saucermen movies, the terrible and true-life tales of the Military/Industrial complex, utopian social engineering and their nutty (and invariably unethical) masterminds, mind control, dreams of life on other planets etc.Slanted and selective in its view of history (as with Curtis' work), Hollings weaves a captivating and fantastically subversive take on post-war America. Tip-toeing carefully through the muddier parts of American history, Hollings skillfully navigates away from conspiracy theory territory (dont worry, no shape-changing lizards here!), essaying some of the more extreme ideas and experiments borne out of the paranoia of the era. Unbeleivably, nearly all of which are a matter of public record. Less a history, more of a meditation on America's post war empire building days (with one eye gazing at the stars).Highly reccomended, especially if you can keep your wits, perspective and sense of humour around subject matters like these!

I ordered this book as Ken Hollings is my tutor at Middlesex University.He recommended for my subject me to read this book as he had covered issues on UFO's, mental health and suburban living in the late 40's - 59.A very interesting, historical read.Recommended.

The book is really great for those who are interested in culture in the very fist place. To me, the space aspect comes the second; however it is for sure the ground on which the book is essentially built up. It explores the various areas in space and its roots in or reflections on culture. Hollings reveals 'dark' secrets which are unfamiliar to masses with his amazing writing skills. Hollings genius is sensible between the lines and the way he structures his arguments and he jumps between a variety of topic, all interconnected within the body of the book. A pleasure to read...