Jason Heller - Strange Stars: How Science Fiction and Fantasy Transformed Popular Music

THE AIR WAS HOT AND CHARGED WITH ELECTRICITY AS I THREADED my way through the crowd at Mile High Stadium. It was August 12, 1987. I was fifteen. And I was there to see David Bowie.

Id camped out for tickets a few weeks before that. Those were the pre-Internet days, when taking such drastic action was not just the best way to secure good seats at a concert, but the ideal method by which to flaunt your fandom. After standing in line for half a day, I snagged a coveted seventh-row ticket. All I had to do then was wait for August 12 to arriveeasier said than done, especially for a fidgety, high-strung teen.

I cant remember a world without David Bowie in it. My mom had given birth to me when she was still in high school; in fact, August 12, 1987, was her thirty-first birthday. She was a child of the rock n roll age, and being a free-spirited ex-hippie, she flooded our household with music. It was mostly the radioand rock radio in the 70s and 80s could not play Bowie enough. As popular as hed become, though, he retained an overwhelming mystique. My mom also loved Lynyrd Skynyrd and Tom Petty, dressed-down rock stars you could easily imagine bumping into at the supermarket. The thought of seeing Bowie at Safeway seemed absurd. He wasnt from here. He wasnt of Earth.

Being like any other reasonable kid who had reached his teens, I rejected the music my mom listened to. Bowie, however, was the exception. Sure, his music belonged to the generation before me. But hed also reinvented himself in the early 80s as a creature of that decade, one who was both an honored forefather and a vital contemporary of all the new wave artists I loved. One of those bands, Duran Duran, was opening for Bowie that night at Mile High Stadium. They were at the height of their popularity, and I was excited beyond belief to see them. But the gravity belonged to Bowie.

There was another reason why Bowie appealed to me, apart from his ability to remain cutting-edge over twenty years into his career as a recording artist. More than any other singer or band I knew of, he embodied something else I loved, something that, by the age of fifteen, had become stamped onto my psyche as an inextricable part of my identity: science fiction.

I saw Star Wars during its first run in the summer of 1977. My grandmother managed a tiny single-screen movie theater in a strip mall in Englewood, Florida, and it was there that one of the defining moments of my life occurred. Its almost embarrassing today to speak so glowingly about seeing Star Wars. The experience has been shared so many times, by so many people, its become rote. That doesnt soften the impact that movie had on me: it filled my entire body, it seemed, with its images and movements and ideas and sounds. I reveled, even at that young age, in its contradictions. It was futuristic, yet it happened in the past. The technology was advanced, yet it was grimy. I had grown up watching reruns of Star Trek with my grandfather, but this was nothing like that shiny, gleaming, immaculate tableau. Star Wars felt lived-in. As such, it was a place kids could imagine living in. And becoming so much more than they already were.

One of the first records I remember owning was Mecos Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band. Being 1977, disco was huge, and I heard those hypnotic beats on the radio just as much as Southern rock. The fact that the orchestral music from Star Wars had been turned into disco struck me as profound. I wasnt aware of who made that music or how they did it. But I was shown the eye-opening idea that movies and music were able to have a conversation, and that songs could be a vehicle for science fiction. By the end of the 70s, my ear glued to the radio, Id begun cataloging such songs in my head: Rocket Man by Elton John, Iron Man by Black Sabbath, Space Cowboy by Steve Miller Band, and a particularly enthralling tune about a wayward astronaut named Major Tom.

IN 1969, DAVID BOWIE RELEASED his sci-fi anthem, Space Oddity. In 1980, he released its sequel, Ashes to Ashes. Both starred Major Tom, a spaceman whod become trapped in his ship, adrift in nothingness, never to touch Earth again. These two songs also neatly bookended the 70s, the decade when sci-fi music came of age.

Bowie had not been the first to sing about space travel. Throughout the 50s and 60s, scores of novelty songs depicted comedic visits from aliensand although his music was instrumental, the jazz bandleader Sun Ra imbued his albums with cosmic titles, ideas, and sounds. But it wasnt until the late 60s that popular music began taking sci-fi seriously. Granted, it was a time when sci-fi began taking itself more seriously; the age of pulp had faded, and a raft of revolutionary new films and novels were reimagining what sci-fi could do and be. Stanley Kubricks 2001: A Space Odyssey and Samuel R. Delanys Nova, both from 1968, were among the works that brought fresh depth, nuance, and sophistication to sci-fi. Emboldened, musicians with latent sci-fi tendencies began to follow suit: the Byrds, Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, Pink Floyd.

It was Space Oddity, though, that launched sci-fi music in earnest. Released to coincide with and capitalize on the Apollo 11 moon landingwhile also hinting at the title of Kubricks movie from the year beforethe song didnt just contain sci-fi lyrics. Sonically, it was a reflection of sci-fi, full of futuristic tones and the innovative manipulation of studio gadgetry.

Space Oddity set off a chain reaction. The 70s began with a wave of progressive rock bandsfrom hit-makers like Yes to obscure acts like Magmaworking sci-fi into their music. Other genres of music followed, each incorporating the motifs of aliens, robots, space exploration, artificial intelligence, and dystopianism in different ways: Krautrock, glam, heavy metal, funk, disco, post-punk. A wholly original school of electronic music emerged. Artists developed and assimilated new technology in the effort to make music sound more like tomorrow: synthesizers, voice modulators, drum machines, samplers. Running parallel to this music were dramatic developmentsand setbacksin the space program, as well as a proliferation of books, films, and eventually video games that changed the face of sci-fi forever.