Solar Flares
Science Fiction in the 1970s
Distributed for Liverpool University Press
Solar Flares examines the ways in which science fiction confronted a new epoch and its own history, including the rise of fantasy, the sci-fi blockbuster, children’s sci-fi, pseudoscience, and postmodernism. It explores significant figures such as Joanna Russ, Samuel R. Delaney, and Octavia Butler. From Larry Niven’s Ringworld to Thomas M. Disch’s On Wings of Song, from The Andromeda Strain to Flash Gordon, this book reclaims seventies science fiction writing, film, and television—alongside music and architecture—as a crucial period in the history of science fiction.
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: Feminism
11. Strange Bedfellows: Gay Liberation
12. Saving the Family? Children’s Fiction
13. Eating the Audience: Blockbusters
14. Chariots of the Gods: Pseudoscience and the Parental Fears
15. Towers of Babel: The Architecture of Sf
16. Ruptures: Metafiction and Postmodernism
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index
Literature and Literary Criticism: General Criticism and Critical Theory
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