The wistful lost spaceman Major Tom is revealed as the pathetic subject of a twisted little children’s rhyme: “Ashes to ashes, funk to funky / we know Major Tom’s a junky / strung out on heaven’s high / feeling an all-time low.” It’s the end of optimism; cynicism and irony are the order of the day. Tom Ewing is right on the money when he writes, “So Major Tom thought he was starring in an Arthur C. Clarke story and found himself in a Philip K. Dick one by mistake, and the result is oddly magnificent.”
Scary Monsters is David Bowie as cyberpunk. These days, that word sounds dreadfully dated, but it’s helpful to remember what it was like when it was new and exciting. It felt spiky and original: that gritty sense of street-level technology, informed by a culture where computers could now be personal, no longer just a tool for lab-coated scientists, and by an increasingly global sensibility then dominated by an ascendant Japan.