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Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man became the first Hugo winner in 1953. Originally serialized in 1951, the novel appeared during the golden 1950s, in the midst of the baby boom, and at the dawning of the age of the expert. In the introduction to the 1996 Vintage edition (which I read), fellow sci-fi author Harry Harrison quickly synopsizes the book with a heavy focus on the capitalist structure of Bester’s future. But it’s not the economics that drive this novel. Instead it is a deepening nervousness about the power of the emerging field of personal psychoanalysis that is represented by the Espers, a large group of human beings who have evolved the power of ESP or mind-reading. In The Demolished Man, the Espers, and by extension pyschoanalists and psychoanalysis, are the most fearful characters, for it is these entities that are able to look within us and show us our true selves, and it is our true selves that we fear the most. For Bester, our true selves are what destroy us.

Skimming over a summary of The Demolished Man, one can’t help but notice similarities to Philip K. Dick’s posthumously famous short story, “The Minority Report.” Both stories feature a society in which murder has been rendered impossible thanks to the emergence of psychics capable of reading minds and predicting murders before they happen. In Dick’s world, his “precogs” have been co-opted by the government and are systemically used by the police department to stop murder through preemptive arrests. In The Demolished Man, Espers make up the population at all levels and work in concert to prevent murder through dissuasion – there’s no point in committing because the psychic population will detect your guilt. Interestingly, even when Espers detect guilt through ESP, they are still obliged to provide non-psychic evidence to an objective computer that determines guilt. The burden of proof still depends on factors outside of the psychic mind, demonstrating Bester’s unwillingness to side with the Espers in the dual society of normal and psychic humans that he’s created.

There are other, major differences between Dick’s story and Bester’s book, the most important one possibly being that The Demolished Man is actually good. “The Minority Report” is a meditation on the ethics of finding a man guilt of a crime he hasn’t yet committed based on non-existent evidence, an interesting premise that is actually better executed in Steven Spielberg’s film adaption than it is in Dick’s noirish source material (Dick wrote a LOT of short stories and books; they couldn’t all be winners). Conversely, Bester’s novel is not a meditation on the ethics of utilizing a pre-emptive criminal system – Bester’s system is not simply preemptive. Instead, Bester uses the scenario of a murder successfully committed and the subsequent race to prove the guilt of the killer to explore not only how a society built out of psychics might function, but the ways in which we hide from ourselves, the lengths we will go to do it, and what it takes to make us confront who we truly are.

Ben Reich, one of Bester’s dueling protagonists, is a non-psychic CEO at the head of a solar-system spanning megacorporation. Plagued by nightmares of The Man with No Face. Reich is falling apart at the seams because his company is about to be absorbed by a corporation owned by his rival, D’Courtney. As a last act of desperation, Reich suggests a merger to D’Courtney, but when he thinks the offer has been refused he comes to the conclusion that the only way for him and his corporation to survive is to kill his rival in cold blood.

As in Clifford D. Simak’s Way Station, Bester’s novel spends a lot of time meditating on what it means to be a Man. Both Simak and Bester conclude that, on some level, violence is inherently part of Man’s nature. Writing in the early 1950s, Bester had just survived WWII and was now living under the long nuclear shadow of the Cold War, which most likely colored his meditation on the intrinsic nature of violence in man’s psyche. Ben Reich is living in a society where violence has been eradicated thanks to the Espers, but he is still driven to kill. Further, his inherent instinct and drive for murder helps him to successfully circumvent detection and later capture. He is aided by a high-level Esper, who risks being cast out of Esper society if he is caught. This Esper acts in the name of greed, another trait that makes up Man, be he normal or psychic.

It seems impossible to describe in one review the nuance that colors Bester’s work. I haven’t even mentioned Lincoln Powell, Bester’s second protagonist and Reich’s nemesis. The police Lieutenant assigned to bringing Bester to justice, Powell is a high level Esper bent on catching his perpetrator. Though one of the most powerful Esper’s on Earth, Powell is repeatedly unable to find enough physical evidence to convince an objective computer that Reich is guilty of murdering D’Courtney.

What he does have is D’Courtney’s daughter, the only witness to the murder who has been thrown into psychosis through witnessing the violent act. Powell initiates a mental process that basically reboots Barbara, causing her to rapidly evolve from infant to grown woman in order to erase the trauma of watching her father be murdered without removing the memory. In the process he falls in love with her, which creates a very strange pedophiliac situation that definitely reminded me of many of the women in Philip K. Dick’s stories. Men’s need to infantilize their lovers and spurn more mature, capable woman is not uncommon for cultural works of these times. The insistence on infantalization and sexual dependency is surely linked to worries about what is means to be a Man during a time when gender roles within the family and society at large were very strictly defined.

At the end of the day, every character is forced to face their true self in order to find the peace or resolution they are searching for. Normally I’m all for revealing the twist in order to deconstruct it, but this time I think I’ll leave the identity of The Man with No Face a secret. The answer Reich finds does tie-in closely with that cult of experts rising to power in the 1950s. It also speaks to America’s increasing obsession with constructing the ideal family, and the way experts often blamed neurosis or abnormal behavior on defective family life. But, in this society, through psychoanalysis (all of which is done by Espers, by the way, because who better to psychoanalyze than a mind reader), every single person can be saved and reintroduced into society with all their good parts still intact, even if it means demolishing them first.

I’m not usually the biggest fan of police-type books, but The Demolished Man supersedes that literary convention, excellently combining the search for self with the search for a way to convict the killer. Even having finished the book, I’m still unsure if I’m supposed to be rooting for Powell or Reich, and Reich was a psychotic killer. Bester does a very good job of forcing his reader to empathize with both perspectives, speaking to the frightened, self-preserving, and violent aspects of ourselves, as well as the peaceful part of us that abhors violence and injustice at our very core. The reader is forced to reflect on their own reaction to Bester’s dueling protagonists, and, as in the best science fiction, we are left with no easy answers, only new questions we must ask about ourselves as we move throughout our present day world.

Gotta love a plug from the Las Vegas Review Journal.

When I first wrote a review of Clifford D. Simak’s A Choice of Gods back in May 2011, I found myself quite captivated by Simak’s deft exploration of the nature of man’s technological and spiritual development in a far future dystopia. My interest in dystopia is what made me pick up the book in the first place, and many of Simak’s novels reach into the future, sometimes near, sometimes far, sometimes both, in order to explore man’s relation to technology and a search for a higher self, usually through some sort of spiritual and/or intellectual transcendence. Science is not necessarily the enemy, but man’s relentless drive for technological innovation is often the reason for the downfall or ruin of humankind.

Way Station is the story of Enoch Wallace, a Civil War veteran born in 1840 who is still alive in roughly 1964, when the novel is set. Enoch is still living in his boyhood home in rural Wisconsin, the pastoral setting being a constant motif in Simak’s work. While neighbors know there is something strange about Enoch, Simak explains that their backwater sense of community leads them all to leave the nature of his existence unexplored. Unfortunately for Enoch, the US government, tangled in the treacherous throws of the Cold War, has caught wind of Enoch’s agelessness, and their investigation into the true nature of Enoch’s being and home leads to major revelations about humankind’s place in the universe.

For Enoch is not an ordinary Rip van Winkle, but is actually the keeper of an intergalactic way station placed on Earth by a consortium of far-advanced alien species called the galactic federation. These aliens have discovered a means of faster-than-light transport that operates something like a transporter does on Star Trek (though, in a more gruesome manifestation of the technology, each traveler’s material body is left dead at its original location, while a new one is materialized for the traveler’s consciousness upon arrival; in Simak’s world, bodies are simply material things, containers). The patterns associated with traveler’s bodies tend to break up when they encounter certain kinds of space junk, so stations like the one on Earth are established to ensure safe passage. Most of Enoch’s visitors are vacationers, as the galactic federation’s mission is again, Star Trek-like in its intent to explore space for a higher purpose rather than simple economic gain, at least originally.

Enoch’s position as the station keeper creates a great deal of cognitive dissonance for our protagonist that leads to lots of contemplating what make a “Man” a “Man.” Enoch lives a double life, both of Earth and of the stars, and, in a way, of the aliens. This split manifests physically in his immortality – as long as he stays in his boyhood home, which has been transformed by alien technology into the impenetrable way station, he doesn’t age. When he leaves the house, as he does daily to walk through his rural property and retrieve the mail, his ability to age is restored to him for that brief time.

Simak has been called a pastoral author, and his descriptions of the Wisconsin countryside are vivid and beautiful. Enoch’s daily walks through nature are one of the strongest ties to the part of “Man” that is Earth Man – a direct link to Earth’s own physical body. Conversely, the station links him to the transcendent nature of the aliens he safeguards, and represents the possibility that “Man” might also severe the link with the other defining factor of our “race,” violence.

One of the most intriguing aspects of Way Station lies in the way Simak investigates what it means to be “Man,” or in a less-limiting, gender and species neutral term, sentient. First there is the aspect of violence, which Simak explores on multiple levels. Enoch is a Civil War veteran and has witnessed firsthand the futility of war, which makes him (uniquely) placed to see the similar futility of impending nuclear war. For Simak, this tendency toward group violence, driven by fear, is an intrinsic part of “Man’s” nature that will drive the species to utter destruction if left unchecked. Integrally linked to apocalyptic future is man’s drive to develop technology, which in this case means more destructive ways of obliterating ourselves. When the aliens offer a solution to MAD, it comes in the form of removing all knowledge of how to operate technological devices of any kind from all humans, driving us back into a dark age and essentially rebooting our intelligence in hopes that the next time it won’t work against us.

There is also the role of personal violence. Enoch’s rifle is always close at hand – he takes all his daily walks with it cradled in his arm and leaves it within careful reach every time he is in the house. The one thing he asked the aliens to install for him to keep him entertained for all eternity is a firing range. Despite having witnessed the insanity of violence firsthand as a solider, and now as a terrified onlooker during the Cold War (and all those intervening wars as well), the rifle is still an integral part of Enoch’s life, representing the violence that still drives him as a “Man.” Even though he never fires it in direct confrontation, he can’t separate himself from it.

Initially the aliens of the galactic federation are posited as the opposite of “Man,” because they have put all petty squabbles and futile violence behind them in the name of peacefully exploring the galaxy. Enoch’s ability to see this peace creates his cognitive dissonance, however, as the novel progresses Simak reveals that the aliens themselves have not transcended their own desire for violence and greed, but have found an intermediary force that allows their benevolent and peaceful sides to win out. And that force is God.

Yes, in Simak’s worlds, nothing is every completely black and white. Out there somewhere an alien invented a machine that allowed sentient beings to communicate with God, proving its existence and, as Simak eventually reveals, creating peace for all who have experienced the presence of the Talisman and its keeper. For you see, the machine works kind of like the Oracle at Delphi, it needs a special operator or “sensitive” (Simak’s terms for psychic) to channel the device and communicate with God. An intermediary. These oracles are rare birds, too, and the only creatures that can make this device work.

It turns out this Talisman has gone missing, which is causing violence and greed to stir in the whole galaxy, not just on Earth. The inevitable conflict in the stars appears to be the force that will finally lead Enoch to choose between his identity as a violent Earth man, and that of the more far seeing alien liaison. But, thank god for deus ex machina (in this case quite literally), Enoch has to choose neither and both. The Talisman shows up on Earth, and Enoch uses his skill with the rifle, the integral violent part of his being, to kill the alien who’s stolen it. Then the Talisman brings peace to both Earth and the galaxy and we end not just with the peaceful resolution of the Cold War, but with Earth being prepared for induction into the galactic federation.

The most interesting part of this solution is the role of Lucy Fisher, Enoch’s deaf-mute neighbor who’s played the role of fey fairy savior throughout the novel, a woman literally struck dumb who can commune with nature but not really people except for Enoch, our divided hero. She stands in as a symbol for mother earth and as the psychic needed to communicate with and activate the Talisman. She is more in touch with the purity of her emotions than any other character in the book, but this also makes her more intellectually simple and simultaneously, more pure. Being a symbol of nature is not an unusual one for a woman, but her literal deafness and dumbness is quire representative of Simak’s inability or unwillingness to create actual, human women. Women aren’t “Man” in this novel, and therefore they’re not human. Lucy is fey and the only other female, Mary, is a ghost that Enoch created using some alien equation. She doesn’t even have physical substance, and her only reason for existence is to be trapped in her unrealized prison of love for him. Women are otherworldly, mysteries, they cannot be controlled, they are part of another universe and foreign others. And here they lack the integral dual nature, specifically the violence, that makes man “Man.” Simak’s women are often props – witches outright, if not oddities, and Lucy Fisher is no exception. She is an asexual Earth angel, a woman who can transcend “Man’s” violence to communicate with God and save the universe.

Also of note is that there simply are no minorities in this book. In A Choice of Gods, Native Americans had largely re-taken the depopulated Earth, an interesting plot twist that hinges on the assumption that Native Americans are more in touch with nature but are not part of the rest of the human race because they’re not down with technology or psychicness. Though included, they are still the Other. In this novel, “Man” is white. The other, when not female, is so outrageous that He is literally Alien. And He is a deliberate choice – we meet no female aliens, nor do we even hear about them.

Finding the historical context for Simak’s novel is fairly simple in many cases. Published in 1963, this novel came right on the heels of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the closest the world ever came to plunging into nuclear war. In Way Station, that sense of crisis and impending doom is ever present, and this time it takes the help of God to stop the escalation, not sheer luck and sensibility.

This was also the age of the space race, and technology is not always the demon in this scenario. Instead, for Simak it is the type of technology that man is developing which is the problem. It may be God and a psychic angel-woman who save the day, but they do it with the help of the Talisman, a machine which has proved the existence of a higher power through the “correct” use of technology. Simak’s suggestion here seems to be that warring over religion may be a root cause of man’s violent tendencies, or that only finding something as transcendent as a God machine can save us, though he doesn’t necessarily state this idea outright.

Also, Enoch knows that the answer is in the stars, as Simak’s novels often look to expansion of the human race into space as the solution to our earthly woes. Interestingly, this exploration of space is most often achieved through psychic and not technological means. Whatever the alternate scenario, Simak seemed to think that in the actual one we were going about it all wrong.

As for his treatment of gender and race, I don’t think there’s anything extraordinary to say other than this book is exemplary of many of the racist and sexist assumptions of the times. We’re still a bit early in the 1960s here, and science fiction at this point was a white boy’s club. The deconstruction of his identity creation that I’m presenting is largely a reading of well-trodden subtext. Tracing Simak’s use of women and minorities in his novels over time might prove interesting, as his work spans several decades, but that is a project for another time.

Simak as an author of science fiction is an enjoyable read, and I’ve barely begun to scratch the surface of his catalog. I would recommend him to fans of Philip K. Dick, as both authors share similar concerns. Dick’s futures are much more bleak and thoughtful, and much more inventive. But Simak is a good writer in the sense that he is writerly – his prose is beautiful. He is constantly asking questions about technology. Approaching technology as a problem is not necessarily unique, but the solutions Simak offers to that problem often are. Finally, Simak is actually quite deft at using science fiction to explore what it is that makes us human. His definition of human may be limited, but noticing and exploring the reasons for those limitations is another exercise in enjoyable reading.

Sadly, most of his books are out of print, but you can find copies very cheaply on amazon.com, or at your local used bookstore (trust me, you will find tons). I encourage you to try Simak out!

As an avid lover of both science fiction and the history of popular culture in the 20th century, I’ve found that my time spent as a graduate student at GMU has only deepened my excitement for reading and interacting with science fiction, no matter the medium. A really wonderful professor of mine, Dr. Brian Platt, once said “nostalgia is a criticism of the present made from the past.” We were in a Post-War Japan class discussing Japanese memories of WWII and the atomic bomb, but I think this statement applies to all memory studies, and should be kept in mind when we are evaluating our own nostalgia for the past and how that nostalgia manifests through popular culture, among other things. We can see this statement in operation through cultural phenomenon like Mad Men, a television program set in the 1960s that comments on our own feelings about the American Dream while hiding behind the screen of its historical setting. It’s easier to view ourselves through the lens of the past because temporal distance takes the sting out of the criticism.

This statement also works the other way around. It’s just as easy to criticize or examine the present from the future, or alternate universes, or parallel universes, or alternate pasts, or whatever other foreign iteration of existence science fiction takes us too. Coming of age under the long nuclear shadow of the Cold War, science fiction as a genre creates worlds both distant and familiar that provide us with an escape from our own world while simultaneously shining a mirror on us to show us what we might be fleeing from.

In this blog I have made it my goal to read and blog about science fiction novels from the perspective of both a fan of the genre and a historian who specializes in the study of culture, memory, and the the time period in which many of these great works were created. I am also a gender scholar, with a broader interest in identity construction, which includes social constructs like race and class. All of these areas of inquiry will play a role in how I approach reading and writing abut these works.

As a jumping-off point, I’ll be reading all the Hugo and Nebula award winning novels to date, with some deviations that I’ll explain later. Eventually I hope to expand this project to include other media as well, like television (a personal favorite) and film. Also, expect to see reviews of books not on my award winning reading list. I also reserve the right to venture into the realm of fantasy if I should find a book compelling enough. Finally, I may also include reviews of works written about the genre itself.

I’ll note now that this is also my “professional” blog, a place to establish my presence in the digital history community, as well as the historical community at large. As such, the blog itself will not be entirely dedicated to the science fiction project, but will also include posts more exclusively related to other historical projects. I do, however, feel this blog is an appropriate place to carry out the science fiction project, as it is relevant to my own field of study, and can hopefully provide enjoyment to fans of science fiction as well as academics. If a post doesn’t speak to your particular interests, please feel free to skip!

Okay, introduction’s over. The first book I’ll be reviewing is Clifford D. Simak’s Hugo winning Way Station, so look for that post soon!

That’s it! I hereby declare my HIST 697 final project completed for submission! You can view it here. I really hope I’ve solved the information architecture problem. I’ve got three films up and running with commentary, with a bunch more uploaded to YouTube for future dissection. Figuring out YouTube (sort of) has been one of my greatest triumphs.

I’m not going to say too much in this blog post because I’m pretty exhausted, but it was great sharing Clio II (and I!) with you guys this year. Thank you so much for all your helpful critiques and also your teaching sessions with me. I really did enjoy the collaborative environment. Now I’m going to look at all your projects!

In addition to my own blog post, I am going to provide some brief comments on one of my classmate‘s final projects:

Great job on this draft of your final project. I love the idea behind the project itself, and I’ll throw out some comments on the design that hopefully will be helpful.

First of all, your site is extremely image heavy, and for someone with a slow internet connection, like me, this means it is taking forever to load. Can you try reducing the file size of all your background images using Photoshop so it’s a slower load time? Or perhaps simply removing one and using a color code instead? Also, you may want to look at your site in Google Chrome. In that browser the alignment of all the elements is way off, weighted toward the left side of the browser. It also appears to be off in Firefox, so now I’m curious if this skewed alignment was your intention? Either way, check your alignment.

Also, you mentioned font choices in your blog. I’m not sure what specific comments Geoff made to you, but I would remove the use of Papyrus in your header image. That font is just about as ridiculed as Comic Sans. I actually follow a blog dedicated to pointing out and disapproving of, if not downright mocking, every use of Papyrus that people come across in design. Perhaps try pulling out one of the historic serifs from your newspaper to use instead. I think this will also help give a more historic feel to the page. Either way, definitely get rid of the Papyrus. Also, the blue in your footer will probably garner you accusations of oversaturation. It is also quite jarring when compared with the rest of your color scheme.

Other than those critiques, I think you’ve got quite a good start. I look forward to seeing the completed project.

This week I spent a lot of time working on the design for my website, trying to take some of the very helpful criticisms I received to heart. I dedicated most of my energy to developing a better information architecture for my site. This meant a re-worked menu bar, which now features a drop down menu that will hopefully direct users much more obviously to my content. The code I used is here, for anyone else who’s interested. I found it to be very easy to work with.

I also redesigned the Watch the Films page so that the actual films themselves are embedded in their entirety on this page. Each film is accompanied by a brief essay and two links, one in the essay itself and one in the caption, directing the user to the film’s dedicated essay page. The film icon next to the film’s title/header also links directly to the film’s dedicated page when clicked. On the essay page, the film in its entirety is presented on the top, but I have re-sized the embedded video so that it is much smaller. This way the user is instantly visually clued into the continuing text. It’s not all hidden below the fold. The essay is both foregrounded and still paired to the film.

The site is otherwise still very light on content. This is partially a reflection of my desire to get the design right first. Once I have that structure in place, I think it will be much easier (and I hope faster) for me to plug in that missing content. It’s also a reflection of my continuing struggles with YouTube. For one thing, I have a very slow DSL connection and I’m not sure how to broach how unacceptable this is with my landlord. Downloading and uploading videos halts my entire connection and I can’t do anything else online until the long slog has finished. So that’s annoying.

Also, I ran into some weird copyright issues. I found some great videos on the Internet Archive that the site identified as in the public domain, but when I uploaded them to YouTube I discovered that there they are flagged as copyrighted. There’s an appeals process, but if you lose they make it sound like you’re doomed to hell fire for all eternity, so I abandoned those particular videos. I also had a time trying to figure out how to upload videos longer than 15 minutes, and when I figured out the solution was to click the link at the bottom of the upload page I felt stupid. So.

Other than uploading context, there are still visual issues that must be addressed, such as the design of my header image, the saturation of my color scheme, and my treatment of the yellow borders. I wanted my page to look like a movie poster, but the point about the yellow against the white is well-taken. I also have yet to even attempt my print stylesheet.

I must also give Jeri a direct shout-out, as her continuing and very thoughtful critique has really helped me understand where I need to go with the site.

I am really late in getting this up, and that’s because I greatly underestimated how hard and time consuming my chosen project was going to be. Uploading videos to YouTube is not as simple as they want you to believe, especially when you have the slowest DSL on earth and your computer randomly decides to remove sound from everything so you have to download everything again and your cat wants to play ALL THE TIME and he breaks things when you ignore him.

That being said, here is what I have up so far:

• Civil Defense Cinema: This is the front page for my project. Some of you may recognize it from my design project. Currently only one link works, and that is…
• Watch the Films!: This is the crux of my website. Here users will be able to scroll down a list of links to films and then select the ones they want to watch. I have two films up to show what the design will look like, but only one link works and that is…
• Let’s Face It: This is a model for the kind of page my users will interact with. After clicking the link, the first thing they’ll see is the embedded YouTube video, which they can then watch. As they scroll down they will read a brief summary of the video, and then, as you can see, I have broken the video down into specific subsections. Each screenshot represents a certain important aspect of the civil defense film, which I explain in the accompanying text. If the user clicks the screen shot they will be taken directly to the part of the video that I am discussing in the text. Interactive!

There is still much left to do. As you can see, I’ve continued with my cinema theme at the bottom of the page. All the currently playing links do work, they just go directly to the YouTube pages for the videos and many of them don’t even have descriptive text there. I have more videos to upload, but that is a long, slow slog, and it shuts down my entire internet so I have to work around it.

Other things I need to do:

• The link currently titled “About Us!” will be changed to say “Civil Defense!” Users can visit this page to read a short summary of what civil defense is and learn the meaning of some key terms, themes, and tropes related to the program. Basically, historical background information. I plan to embed an “about me” page in the footer, as David did.
• “Further Reading!” also has to be changed. I’m actually thinking of making it say “More Stuff!” That goes with the campy, movie poster feel of the site, at least. On this page I’m going to put links to other resources, including all the books on civil defense I read for the project, links to all the free archives where I found the videos and images, and links to other wonderful civil defense websites.
• Spell check. Lots and lots of spell check.

Part of what’s taking up so much time, other than struggling with YouTube, is writing all the content. Taking all those screen shots and editing them is easy but incredibly time consuming, as is deciding what I want to focus on in which video. Some of the important subtext is repeated over and over, so I have to decide if I want to highlight it in each individual video or not. I think treating each as an individual piece is best, but that is definitely time consuming.

I plan to keep working on my website all the way up until class time, so hopefully there will be a bit more content by then. I’ve really enjoyed watching the videos, and working with them, and I hope I’ve at least begun to come up with a good way to collect and display them to users, as well as pair them with historical narrative. The design of the site is making me nervous, but in trying to generate and upload content I’ve neglected that side. I guess I won’t know until I get some actual users to comment, so I look forward to tomorrow’s criticism and I’m really glad I have that full two weeks to work on this. I will say, however, that I really like this project a lot. It’s a great way for ME to gather and think about my primary sources, and my audience, and if it works out I can envision myself keeping up with the project after CLIO, or at least transforming it into something else.

Edit: This week I commented on David’s revised final project draft.

After reading my classmates’ blogs, I noticed that many of them posted about their own designs as well as critiquing each other’s, so I thought I’d briefly blog about mine as well. Like Megan, I chose to go in and make some changes to my site after receiving Sheri’s very helpful comments. This is the site as edited after reading Sheri’s comments. This is the original version of the site, though the CSS here does include the skip nav that I had originally omitted.

Like many of my classmates, this website will serve, at the very least, as a rough template for my final project. As you may gather from the body content of the site, I plan to pair civil defense films with historical commentary on the films themselves. I plan to upload the films I’ve found for free on the Internet Archive to my own YouTube channel (yet to be created) which I will then embed in the site. Users can then play the videos and will have a chance to read my deconstruction of what they’ve seen. I will pair the commentary itself with screen shots from the films and other supplementary materials so that the text will also be image rich. My challenge will to be to keep my narrative both accessible and informative. For the moment I plan to let the YouTube channel stand as a place for users to add their own comments, taking advantage of that existing infrastructure for interactivity. Perhaps I will also create some sort of page or form soliciting film submissions as well.

I also hope to create a page listing other resources visitors can use to learn more about the history of civil defense. There is where I plan to list and acknowledge the many monographs I’ve used over the course of my own research. It may even serve as a nice annotated bibliography. I’m also considering contacting other enthusiast civil defense sites on the web to create a mutual support network. Enthusiasts seem to have done a lot of important work in civil defense history, especially when it comes to collecting primary source material.

As I think about my final project I’m concerned not only about the text I plan to write for the site, but also how to display the videos in a visually pleasing way in terms of the site’s design itself. I think I’ve done all right when it comes to creating a certain period atmosphere for the site, but now I have to see how functional that design can be. Other nitpicks : I’m still not happy with the font. It’s so interesting Sheri picked up on it, because I tried for several days and just sort of gave up. She hit on what was wrong with the Trebuchet: it was too round. So I’ve switched to the straighter Verdana for now. Also, that Geiger counter guy at the bottom needs some sort of caption or text floating next to him. He’s there to fill what was too much white space. I got him from a civil defense pamphlet. I am going to continue pondering how to fix that blip at the bottom of the page. It’s actually been giving me trouble for several days as well.

This week I will be critiquing my classmate David’s design assignment, Santa Anna Goes to Washington. I’m excited that I get to work with David’s assignment, as he’s quite adept with both code and design and I’m always learning (and “borrowing”) from him.

So first, positive:

• I’ll state simply that you’ve nailed CARP. I really love the way you’ve used the different borders and colors to create interesting boxes on your page that almost mimic a flag. The color scheme is quite nice – the blue really adds a lively pop, especially when contrasted with the yellows in your logo.
• I think you’ve done well going for the period look. Part of this achievement is the aforementioned color scheme, and the addition of the historical map and figure in your logo. But the font choices, both in your logo and the serif in your body copy, are excellent. The choice of font color contrasted with the background really looks like ink on aged paper, but because of the strong blue and red, and the crisp logo image, your site avoids looking cliche and instead looks like quite lively.
• I’m just going to say that I really am still quite impressed that you’ve managed to draw together such a complex color scheme and detailed logo image in such a way that still looks simple and usable over all.
• Small point, but I actually really like the way you’ve used your footer to include the about you information. It’s well styled, and it’s a good use of the space. I may have to mimic you when I’m working on fixing my own design.

Areas for improvement:

• Ah, that ornament. It is a great ornament. But I’m still not quite sure it works. It is okay on the main page, but when you start clicking into the meat of your site, which I’m sure isn’t finished yet, it looks very awkward just hanging out at the top all by itself. Maybe try making it smaller? Its size may be one reason it’s so jarring. Also, in this case we only see it once – there’s no repetition. If you choose to leave it in, you might find it becomes less clunky and awkward if it’s quite obviously part of a “scheme.” It would have shown up more than once in a document, yes? And also, it’s not the right color. Turn that black into one of the browns in your font, the darker one from your headers. Then it will look like everything was printed in the same ink on the same page. Right now it stands out as an image, especially because there is still some white around the edges I think – it’s not entirely transparent. I am rooting for the ornament, I really am, but you may have to let it go. Or maybe it’s that particular ornament? Anyway, I am eager to see what you can do. Trying to make it look more natural will probably help some of the issues.
• Let me stop and talk about the content of your main page. I was praising you for the simplicity, and that is one reason the page really, really works, but at the same time, almost all of my attention is drawn to that logo and the content of the page itself comes as an afterthought. This is both in terms of the design and the actual body copy. What is there to pull my eye down? The ornament is the only visually interesting element. I assume each of your sections will be replete with images – perhaps pull one image from each section and make a small thumbnail graphic, then put it next to each link in the list, like a bulleted list but with icons? If they are very simple they could serve to draw attention down to the nav in your body and also, by virtue of your content, instantly inform the user just a little bit about each section’s content. Also, spice up the actual text a bit. I know things sometimes work better short and sweet on the web, but I’m not sure you’ve provided enough impetus here to get people clicking based on that teeny tiny paragraph at the beginning. You know why your project is cool and exciting, and so do we (your classmates), but have you communicated that coolness and excitement to other audiences? Who is your audience?
• In terms of that horizontal nav bar, it looks great, but I might consider listing “Background” before “Meet the Travelers.” I think I can guess at your original design choice – you want to highlight the travelers, get your user to engage with their personalities, and use those things to pull the user into the story itself. But every time I looked at it the order just bothered me. Maybe find another word for “Background,” one that’s more exciting? That is a tall order. But I would seriously ponder the order of links here, or the descriptive words you choose, as this is part of your narrative arc.
• I’m going to make some comments about the inside pages of your site, and I’m aware you may not have finished styling them yet, but on I go nevertheless. In terms of the navigation inside the website, once you get into the archive, it looks quite awkward. For example, when you’re clicking through the travelers and all their names are just hanging out up there at the top. Is there a way to move those around? Perhaps make them a left nav so they don’t get confused with your navigation at the top, or simply lost? I know you’re working with Omeka, so your choices may be limited. But when I first clicked through your site I was terribly confused by the sudden changes in navigation. It may simply be a case of a styled front page vs. an as-yet unstyled archive, and if so, I apologize.
• Also, I see in your one completed biography of Santa Anna his picture is at the bottom of the page. Again, I’m not sure the limitations you’re up against when working with Omeka, but I would try to put all of your images above the fold, especially when they’re of people. Also, make sure all your images are facing into the text.

Okay, this is what I see at first glance. I think you’ve got a very impressive start. I really is a lovely site to look at, and I can see what you’re building toward. I am eager to see and interact with the finished product. It’s been very fun watching this idea develop over these past two semesters.

As I worked my way through The Lost Museum website and began taking down notes on my first impressions, I realized some of my judgments may be rather unfair considering the site was built in the early Aughts and therefore adhered to different standards and technological capabilities than the websites we work with today as users and builders. For example, the immediate music and sound that played the instant I wanted to view a (slow-loading, tiny) video is by now a well-accepted faux pas. I also felt irritated that I had to register to play the mystery game, and once there found absolutely nothing intuitive about how the game actually worked, even after having read about it. The interface felt heavily static and reminded me of educational games that I never found appealing. Because I chose to evaluate the hyperlinks linearly, I didn’t reach the lengthy, text-heavy How to Use This Site  page until after I’d been through the entire site, and when presented with that amazing chunk of small-fonted information, I didn’t bother reading it.

At first I liked the simple design of the site’s opening page, but working through the site it became clear to me that more navigation explanation, if not direction, would have benefited the user greatly. It did not have to be extensive. Also, the inconsistency in the sites design as a whole was jarring – the stark contrast between the spartan black design of the interactive museum pages and the white-backed, text-heavy archival pages and essays. I will say, I found the archival pages to be of the most interest, and to be the most useful. It’s too bad they aren’t the featured content on the site, or at least more clearly identified right off the bat.

It would be interesting to read a report on the site’s usage today, and I also found it interesting to experience the site after reading the article about its design. I almost feel that in attempting to give the reader too much freedom, the builders became completely disconnected from giving users adequate signposts, if not guidance. Also, the part of the site built on exploration of a three dimensional space still lacked a compelling narrative, and to me didn’t link to the archival content and historical essays other than being compiled in the same place. Further, it seems the site is attempting to appeal to a mixed audience, which is fine, but in the way the content is presented the site also seems to completely divorce separate audiences from each other. I’m not sure that’s effective in this case, especially without the aforementioned signposts.

Despite my criticisms, I think it’s a great synthetic effort, and a great attempt to take advantage of 3D virtual worlds to imbue them with intellectual content. Perhaps they needed to hire more game designers to help them with the process. This disconnect may be evidence of where we need to see more interdisciplinary work being done to build synthetic tools and online environments that combine different types of media and information into one satisfying whole.

It’s especially interesting for me to interact with this website as I work on my own design project and final project. My site centers around educational civil defense films, and I haven’t even begun to tackle how to embed the videos in my site in a way that will encourage viewing, let alone how to integrate the videos with a historical narrative. Further, how do I meet the challenges of getting my users to both watch the videos and interact with the narrative content? How do I even lay out my navigation menu? Which links take precedence? How many videos do I chose? How do I personally deconstruct the videos I watch? How do I translate my analysis into something readable for a lay and academic web audience?

Brown and his fellow builders asked the same types of questions as they built The Lost Museum and wrote the first successful edition of Who Built America?, but they captured a very brief moment in time when educational CD-ROMs seemed so appealing, perhaps simply because they were so new. They tried to build on the fleeting success of that format by transplanting it to the web, when what they needed to do was translate it. We struggle every day to catch up the changing uses and meanings of the internet. So my users will be familiar with YouTube, I expect, will they be willing to watch a video embedded in my site? In 10 years will historians such as myself be using similar techniques to allow our users to watch our motion picture sources (when not protected my copyright) or will that technique soon seem clunky and out of fashion? Or am I simply having my own unique user-end experience, one that has taught me what I’m going to try and avoid doing, anyway?