Abstract
Campbell examines factual entertainment and television documentary treatments of the space sciences, largely neglected in both science communication and documentary scholarship. The chapter explores the relationship between space science programmes, screen science fiction, and practices and traditions within professional astronomical imaging. Campbell discusses how such processes interact with the processes of turning space sciences into factual entertainment television. As well as revealing the intersections between astronomy, science fiction and documentary, Campbell argues that these programmes offer particular representations of the technologies of the space sciences from within a framework of the technological sublime. The chapter concludes that the use of CGI to represent cosmological phenomena itself can be regarded as an extension of this, which Campbell identifies as the subjunctive sublime.
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Campbell, V. (2016). Space Sciences: Wonders of the Cosmos. In: Science, Entertainment and Television Documentary. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-38538-3_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-38538-3_3
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