This book considers the impact that the new art of film had on the development of another new art, the emerging science fiction genre, during the pre- and early post-World War II era, at a time when sf as a literary form was trying to locate an identity, establish key themes, and even settle on a name. Focusing on the primary publishing venue for early sf literature, the popular pulp magazines, such as Amazing Stories , Astounding Stories , and Wonder Stories , it traces this early film/literature relationship through four common features: stories that involve film or the film industry; film-related advertising; editorial matters and readers' letters commenting on film; and the magazines' heralded cover and story illustrations. An examination of these features demonstrates an abiding interest in and even fascination with the movies, which, as many of the readers, writers, and editors of sf recognized, demonstrated a modernist agenda similar to that which characterized the new literature. By surveying these haunting traces of another medium in early sf discourse, we can begin to see the key role that a cinematic mindedness played in this formative era, and to expand the early history of sf as a cultural idea beyond the usual boundaries that have been staked out by its literary manifestations and the genre's historians.