Strange Stars

April 15, 2018
The mothership connection is clear: Where there's rock 'n' roll, science fiction isn't far away, as Hugo Award winner Heller (Taft 2012, 2012, etc.) deftly demonstrates.The author was born in 1972, a couple of months after David Bowie's landmark album "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars" appeared. That wasn't Bowie's first foray into sci-fi; as Heller notes, his career is bracketed and punctuated by tunes devoted to the intrepid Major Tom, who ends up a skeleton encased in a spacesuit with Bowie's 2015 farewell album, "Blackstar." It's a good thing Bowie was on the case, writes the author, for Pink Floyd wasn't going to get the interplanetary job done, and Neil Young, despite the sci-fi-born "doomsday, time-travel, space-ark" album "After the Gold Rush," was pretty well earthbound. There's a lot of yes, but hedging as Heller assembles his catalog of sci-fi rock: ELP may not have been thinking outer-spacey thoughts with "Tarkus," which, "for all its highbrow musicianship...is hardly the stuff of classic sci-fi," and X-Ray Spex was more tuned to pop culture than cyberia when Poly Styrene got to caterwauling about the Bionic Man. Still, it's clear the author has listened to a vast assemblage of music, and readers who don't know the foundation stories of P-Funk and Devo, Gong and Hawkwind, Kraftwerk and Jefferson Starship, and a whole host of lysergic-and-Asimov-soaked bands will find his tales to be both entertaining and instructive. His explorations sound just the right note, too, as when he unpacks the Deep Purple tune "Space Truckin' " to find in it "in essence, Steppenwolf's 'Born to Be Wild' recast for outer-space Hell's Angels." Though the thesis can be a little wobbly once taken outside of the 1970s--Chuck Berry didn't hitch his Caddy to a star, after all, and Elvis, though Martian, was resolutely terrestrial--the book holds up well to argument.Sci-fi geeks with a penchant for rock 'n' stomp, prog excess, and other flavors of pop will enjoy this one.

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April 16, 2018
Hugo Award–winner Heller (Taft 2012) traverses the realm of 1970s science fiction in his thorough cultural history that examines how the genre influenced music and musicians, from David Bowie’s 1969 “Space Oddity” to the “tipping point” in 1977, when Star Wars, Alan Parsons Project’s I, Robot, and Styx’s “Come Sail Away” were all released. David Bowie’s career is a constant thread throughout, from his “Space Oddity” song (inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey and the Apollo 11 moon landing), which Heller establishes as the catalyst for sci-fi infiltrating 1970s music, to its sequel “Ashes to Ashes” in 1980. Heller excavates sci-fi influences across genres, including the impact Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Childhood’s End had on Bowie and myriad psychedelic artists; the robotic aesthetic of electronic duo Kraftwerk and their cold, mechanical, synthesizer-driven music; the dystopian lyrics of postpunk bands such as Joy Division; and the extraterrestrial liberation baked into the identity of seminal funk band Parliament. Heller concludes that, while countless bands wrote songs about science fiction, Bowie stood apart because he “was science fiction.” An adventurous guide through 1970s music zeitgeists, Heller’s work will pique the interests of those in search of something a little more cosmic.

Starred review from May 15, 2018

Heller (Taft 2012) makes a convincing case for the influence of sf literature and cinema on 1970s popular music. The narrative roughly begins with the moon landing of 1969, which made Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin instantly famous. Another icon's burgeoning career piggybacked off this important event: David Bowie. His 1969 hit "Space Oddity," argues Heller, paved the way for pop music's interest in sf for the next decade. Though Bowie is Heller's central figure, he also homes in on acts such as Jefferson Starship, Hawkwind, Parliament/Funkadelic, and Meco, who rose to fame with his disco version of the Star Wars theme in 1977. Heller further illustrates how sf writers such as Robert A. Heinlein, Philip K. Dick, and Samuel R. Delany strongly influenced the music during this period. The accessible title will have readers scouring local bookstores for old sf classics and used record bins for long-forgotten LPs such as Colonel Elliott & The Lunatics' Interstellar Reggae Drive (1973) and Zed's Visions of Dune (1979). VERDICT Fans of popular music and sf alike will thoroughly enjoy this journey through the center of the 1970s. Recommended for all libraries.--Brian Flota, James Madison Univ., Harrisonburg, VA

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