Description
Book SynopsisScience fiction produced in the 1970s has long been undervalued, dismissed by Bruce Sterling as “confused, self-involved, and stale.” The New Wave was all but over and Cyberpunk had yet to arrive. The decade polarised sf – on the one hand it aspired to be a serious form, addressing issues such as race, Vietnam, feminism, ecology and sexuality, on the other hand it broke box office records with Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Alien and Superman: The Movie. Across the political spectrum, writers perceived a series of invisible enemies: radicals addressed the ideological structures of racism, sexism, homophobia, colonialism, pollution and capitalism and the possibility of new social structures, whereas conservatives feared the gains made by the civil rights movement, feminism, gay liberation, independence movements, ecology and Marxism and the perceived threats to the nuclear family. Sf would never be the same again. Beginning with chapters on the First sf and New Wave authors who published during the 1970s, Solar Flares examines the ways in which the genre confronted a new epoch and its own history, including the rise of fantasy, the sf blockbuster, children’s sf, pseudoscience and postmodernism. It explores significant figures such as Joanna Russ, Samuel R. Delany and Octavia Butler. From Larry Niven’s Ringworld to Thomas M. Disch’s On Wings of Song, from The Andromeda Strain to Flash Gordon and from Doctor Who to Buck Rogers, this book reclaims seventies sf writing, film and television – alongside music and architecture – as a crucial period in the history of science fiction.
Trade ReviewReviews 'The author’s knowledge of the science fiction texts of the 1970s is absolutely compendious, covering not only the more mainstream sf writers of the 1970s but also some of the less well-known byways. Solar Flares constitutes a significant addition to sf scholarship.'
Brian Baker
'A superb work of narrative reference.'
Science Fiction Studies'Solar Flares can especially be recommended to teachers and students seeking more ‘off-trail’ fare than they will find on the shelves at Barnes.'
Science Fiction Film and TelevisionTable of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Prologue
- 1. The Ends of First Sf: Pioneers as Veterans
- 2. After the New Wave: After Science Fiction?
- 3. Beyond Apollo: Space Fictions after the Moon Landing
- 4. Big Dumb Objects: Science Fiction as Self-Parody
- 5. The Rise of Fantasy: Swords and Planets
- 6. Home of the Extraterrestrial Brothers: Race and African American Science Fiction
- 7. Alien Invaders: Vietnam and the Counterculture
- 8. This Septic Isle: Post-Imperial Melancholy
- 9. Foul Contagion Spread: Ecology and Environmentalism
- 10. Female Counter-Literature: Feninism
- 11. Strange Bedfollows: Gay Liberation
- 12. Saving the Family: Children's Fiction
- 13. Eating the Audience: Blockbusters
- 14. Chariots of the Gods: Rseudoscience and Parental Fears
- 15. Towers of Babel: The Architecture of Sf
- 16. Ruptures: Metafiction and Postmodernism
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
