Master mechanics & wicked wizards : images of the American scientist as hero and villain from colonial times to the present / Glen Scott Allen.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Simon pure amateurs : American scientists of the early nineteenth century -- Sex and the single mad scientist : domesticating scientific passion in nineteenth-century American fiction -- A cabinet of wonders : selling American science in the nineteenth century -- The world of tomorrow : technocracy as utopia in the age of pulps -- The incredible shrinking scientist : how the heroes of Los Alamos became internationalist traitors -- Invaders with Ph.D.'s : aliens, commies, and eggheads in science fiction films of the 1950s -- Fallout : politics and paranoia after the bomb -- Rocket science : (their) Sputniks + (our) dudniks = NASA -- Tom Swift and the cosmic astronauts : pilots, pitchmen, warriors, or mechanics? -- America vs. the evil empire(s) : good astronauts, bad aliens, and the battle for the high frontier -- Looking backward : useful vs. wicked inventing in colonial America -- DeÌjaÌ vu all over again : fear, funding, and ignorance in contemporary scientific "controversies."