Solar flares : science fiction in the 1970s / Andrew M. Butler.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Butler, Andrew M.

Series:

Liverpool science fiction texts and studies ; 43.

Liverpool science fiction texts and studies ; 43

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Science fiction--History and criticism.

Science fiction.

Physical Description:

x, 302 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Liverpool : Liverpool University Press, 2012.

Summary:

Science 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 Octavin 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. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 The Ends of First Sf: Pioneers as Veterans 11

2 After the New Wave: After Science Fiction? 24

3 Beyond Apollo: Space Fictions after the Moon Landing 38

4 Big Dumb Objects: Science Fiction as Self-Parody 51

5 The Rise of Fantasy: Swords and Planets 65

6 Home of the Extraterrestrial Brothers: Race and African American Science Fiction 78

7 Alien Invaders: Vietnam and the Counterculture 92

8 This Septic Isle: Post-Imperial Melancholy 106

9 Foul Contagion Spread: Ecology and Environmentalism 120

10 Female Counter-Literature: Feminism 136

11 Strange Bedfellows: Gay Liberation 152

12 Saving the Family? Children's Fiction 168

13 Eating the Audience: Blockbusters 181

14 Chariots of the Gods: Pseudoscience and Parental Fears 192

15 Towers of Babel: The Architecture of Sf 206

16 Ruptures: Metafiction and Postmodernism 221.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [241]-269) and index.

ISBN:

1846318343

9781846318344

OCLC:

794592499