TY - JOUR TI - ‘Not one voice speaking to many’: E C Large, wireless, and science fiction fans in the mid-twentieth century AU -Charlotte Sleigh PY - 2018 VL - IS - Autumn 2017 KW - Dawn in Andromeda KW - E C Large KW - fans KW - science fiction KW - wireless AB - In this paper, E C Large’s 1956 novel Dawn in Andromeda is examined, using literary analysis, as a work of public history of science. The novel recounts how God places a pioneer population on a new planet, challenging them to work from nothing to the creation of a ‘seven-valve all-wave superhet wireless’ in a single generation. On a general level, this article presents Dawn in Andromeda as a history of science firmly rooted in the human and material efforts of engineering. As such, it is shown to chime more particularly with the hopeful definitions of science explored by wireless enthusiasts and the first generation of science fiction fans in Britain during the 1930s. However, the optimism of the 1930s is not borne out by the novel; ultimately, Dawn in Andromeda satirises the wireless as a form of corrupted science that did not deliver what the fans had hoped for. N1 - It is not, perhaps, insignificant that 1936 was also the year when the BBC Listener Research department was inaugurated (Silvery, 2016, p 1). N1 - It is impossible to tell whether Jacques (or his parents) had personal experience of the coal industry, or whether his series was the result of book-learning or lecture attendance. Mines did exist in the Leicester area, the house in which he lived – almost certainly his parents’ – was rather too large to belong to a mine worker’s family. N1 - Recent work (Trotter, 2013) has begun to disassemble the historical wall between high modernism (Woolf, relativity) and the apparently plebeian modernism of scientific realists (Wells, radar). Large is an excellent case in point. N1 - Large’s one scientific book, The Advance of the Fungi (1940), was itself arranged as a historical narrative, comprised of human efforts. N1 - In his 1933 essay ‘Escape’, Large too recalls the ‘trend of ingenuity and delight’ that at first inspired him to be an engineer (Large, 1933, p 19). PB - The Science Museum Group SN - 2054-5770 LA - eng DO - 10.15180/170802 UR - https://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/article/not-one-voice-speaking/ T2 - Science Museum Group Journal