Solar Flares: Science Fiction in the 1970s

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.

Andrew M. Butler is a senior lecturer in media and cultural studies at Canterbury Christ Church University. He is a co-editor of the journal Extrapolation.