IDS 2673 01 - Fall 2025 - Faulk

English singer, songwriter and actor David Bowie would eventually become a cultural icon, but he spent his early career transmitting the futuristic ideas and speculations drawn from his extensive reading in the "New Wave" of Science Fiction writers to an ever-broadening audience. We will examine Bowie’s creative engagement with sci-fi, focusing on the singer's recordings from the early 70s from “Space Oddity” to Diamond Dogs (1975), a concept album about a futuristic dystopian England, as well as sample music from other futuristic/fantasy oriented bands of the day including George Clinton’s Parliament/Funkadelic projects, Kraftwerk, and T.Rex. Our reading will focus on the sci fi and speculative fiction by H.P. Lovecraft, William Burroughs, J.G. Ballard and others that Bowie drew on for inspiration during these years.