The Cold War period of history witnessed competing scientists in both the East and the West, mainly but not always for reasons of prestige or perceived military needs, enter into a race to create amazing new technologies - many of which were of a kind that had never been seen or heard of before.&nbsp;Yet not everyone was taken by surprise by the creation of this new iteration of 'the space race' or its more destructive cousin 'the nuclear arms race'.&nbsp;From super-powerful planet destroying atomic weapons through to interstellar space travel with multi stage rockets, aficionados and readers of science fiction had read and seen it all before - along with the consequences it often resulted in creating - many times over. Sometimes reality lived up to the SF vision, at other times it didn’t.&nbsp;The hydrogen bomb was as terrifyingly destructive as anything in science fiction could ever be created in the imaginings of cold war Authors, while real-world lasers didn't even come close to the promise of the classic ray gun so beloved of everyone from Buck Rogers through to Han Solo.&nbsp;Nevertheless, when the scientific Cold War culminated in the Strategic Defence Initiative or SDI of the 1980s, it was so science-fictional in its aspirations that the worlds media dubbed it as being“Star Wars” - a name that the Regan administration were more than happy to use in all its future public announcements and scientific test reports, until the wasteful and all but useless program was abandoned as unworkable and finally shut down. This entertaining and interesting historical account of this time of fear and mistrust in the worlds history, offers a plethora of little known facts and insights from previously long classified military projects now abandoned and in many cases forgotten about. This book shows how the real-world science of the Cold War period followed in the footsteps of Science Fiction Authors over the decades after the end of world war two in 1945 – and how the two together changed our perceptions of both science and scientists while going onto pave the way in which the world that we all live in today came to be.This book is Volume XXVI of the ongoing 'Science And Fiction' Book Series created and produced by the publisher of this book as a way to encourage people to become involved in all fields of Scientific endeavour through the use of Fiction and to encourage people to research topics that they may find intriguing when reading Science Fiction Authors. The series was initially designed for high school and university students as a teaching resource but due to their popularity are now being read by people of all ages all across the world.This book includes 55 Photographic illustrations.The English Author Andrew May is a former scientist with an MA from Cambridge University and a PhD in Astrophysics from Manchester University. After a thirty year career spanning the academic, government and private sectors, he has now settled in the South-West of England where he works as a freelance writer and consultant on subjects as diverse as defence technology, history, physics, Forteana and New Age beliefs. This is his second book with this publisher written as part of this series.

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