> Skip to content
  • Published: 4 June 2019
  • ISBN: 9781612197760
  • Imprint: Melville House
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $27.99
Categories:

Strange Stars

How Science Fiction and Fantasy Transformed Popular Music




A Hugo Award-winning author and music journalist explores the weird and wild story of when rock 'n' roll met the sci-fi world of the 1970s

A Hugo Award-winning author and music journalist explores the weird and wild story of when rock ’n’ roll met the sci-fi world of the 1970s

As the 1960s drew to a close, and mankind trained its telescopes on other worlds, old conventions gave way to a new kind of hedonistic freedom that celebrated sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. Derided as nerdy or dismissed as fluff, science fiction rarely gets credit for its catalyzing effect on this revolution.
In Strange Stars, Jason Heller recasts sci-fi and pop music as parallel cultural forces that depended on one another to expand the horizons of books, music, and out-of-this-world imagery.

In doing so, he presents a whole generation of revered musicians as the sci-fi-obsessed conjurers they really were: from Sun Ra lecturing on the black man in the cosmos, to Pink Floyd jamming live over the broadcast of the Apollo 11 moon landing; from a wave of Star Wars disco chart toppers and synthesiser-wielding post-punks, to Jimi Hendrix distilling the “purplish haze” he discovered in a pulp novel into psychedelic song. Of course, the whole scene was led by David Bowie, who hid in the balcony of a movie theater to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey, and came out a changed man…

If today’s culture of Comic Con fanatics, superhero blockbusters, and classic sci-fi reboots has us thinking that the nerds have won at last, Strange Stars brings to life an era of unparalleled and unearthly creativity—in magazines, novels, films, records, and concerts—to point out that the nerds have been winning all along.

  • Published: 4 June 2019
  • ISBN: 9781612197760
  • Imprint: Melville House
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $27.99
Categories:

About the author

Jason Heller

is a longtime entertainment journalist for The A.V. Club and coauthor of its 2009 pop culture bible Inventory. He lives in Denver, Colorado, and is currently writing a steampunk pirate novel.

Also by Jason Heller

See all

Praise for Strange Stars

"Enlightening... excellent." - Tor.com

"Strange Stars is an ultra-engaging dive into science fiction's impact on the rock and pop music we know and love. "--Jessica Hopper, author of The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic

"Full of cosmic wisdom that will open your mind to alien melodies, and also make you hear your favorite classic rock and funk in a whole new way."--Charlie Jane Anders, author of All the Birds in the Sky


"There's never been anything like Strange Stars before--a fantastic voyage through rock & roll history, decoding the sci-fi inspiration that's always lurked at the heart of it."--Rob Sheffield, author of On Bowie

penguin pop image
penguin pop image