With Strange Stars: David Bowie, Pop Music, and the Decade Sci-Fi Exploded, music critic and Hugo Award winner Jason Heller has done something remarkable: He has written a book that, near as I can tell, no one thought to write before even though it mines a remarkably rich vein of cultural analysis. Rock ’n’ roll and science fiction might have the two most obsessive fandoms out there, and both ascended to their places in the cultural firmament at roughly the same time in the mid-20th century. While the overlap is in some respects obvious—the titular David Bowie’s first hit was the Kubrick-inspired “Space Oddity” and his later Ziggy Stardust character makes the science fiction influence blindingly obvious—the confluence of s.f. and pop music did more to shape each than even the geekiest among us realize.

Take the 1967 Bowie track “We Are Hungry Men,” recorded two years before he would land on the charts with “Space Oddity.” It’s a weirdly jaunty first-person song about a future dystopia brought on by overpopulation. It contains this shocking verse: “I’ve prepared a document / Legalizing mass abortion / We will turn a blind eye to infanticide.” Although I’m a Bowie obsessive, I had no idea that the song was likely inspired by the Harry Harrison novel Make Room, Make Room, which was serialized in one of the young Bowie’s favorite science fiction magazines. The name of the novel probably doesn’t ring a bell, but the movie it later inspired is no doubt familiar: Soylent Green, starring Charlton Heston.