Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T05:27:32.778Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
This chapter is part of a book that is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core

Prologue

Andrew M. Butler
Affiliation:
Canterbury Christchurch University
Get access

Summary

There was a moment in October 1977 when I watched Doctor Who at my grandparents' flat. The particular episode was part of ‘The Invisible Enemy’ (1–22 October 1977), in which the alien-infected Doctor was cloned and then miniaturised in order to be injected into himself. I bring this up in part to demonstrate the pitfalls of historical accounts, but also because the notion of the invisible enemy is an almost perfect description of one recurring trope within this book. The same episode dates the events of Paul Magrs's extraordinary Young Adult novel, Strange Boy (2002); an appendix to that novel explains what Doctor Who (23 November 1963–) is, along with Spangles, Battlestar Galactica (17 September 1978–29 April 1979) and other aspects of late 1970s popular culture. Anyone who lived through the period may find it hard to avoid feeling nostalgic, but also to resist a sense of camp. After a period of being shunned, the 1970s has returned with added postmodern irony, as popular culture draws upon the period with varying degrees of love and ridicule. In tracing this era, I do not want to indulge in nostalgia, to find my own foundation myth in my own autobiography or to be overly guided by where sf ended up in subsequent years.

I have adopted the metaphor of the Invisible Enemy to describe the ideological battlegrounds of the 1970s.

Type
Chapter
Information
Solar Flares
Science Fiction in the 1970s
, pp. 1 - 10
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Print publication year: 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Prologue
  • Andrew M. Butler, Canterbury Christchurch University
  • Book: Solar Flares
  • Online publication: 05 April 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.5949/9781846317798.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Prologue
  • Andrew M. Butler, Canterbury Christchurch University
  • Book: Solar Flares
  • Online publication: 05 April 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.5949/9781846317798.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Prologue
  • Andrew M. Butler, Canterbury Christchurch University
  • Book: Solar Flares
  • Online publication: 05 April 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.5949/9781846317798.001
Available formats
×