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Jason Heller | Strange Stars: David Bowie, Pop Music, and the Decade Sci-Fi Exploded

Wednesday July 25, 2018 07:00 PM EDT
Cost: Free
CL RECOMMENDS

From the venue:

Join us on Wednesday, July 25 at 7 p.m. for a book signing event with “Strange Stars” author Jason Heller. The Hugo Award-winning writer will appear in conversation with Chad Radford, music editor of “Creative Loafing,” to discuss the weird and wild story of when rock ’n’ roll met the sci-fi world of the 1970s. This event is free and open to the public. 

ABOUT THE BOOK:
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: David Bowie, Pop Music, and the Decade Sci-Fi Exploded,” 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 synthesizer-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.

More information

At

A Capella Books Magnum
208 Haralson Ave. N.E.
Atlanta, GA 30307
(404) 681-5128
acappellabooks.com
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