Musician Protagonists in SF, pt.12

TITLE: Orfeo

AUTHOR: Richard Powers

YEAR: 2014

IS THIS SF?
I believe so, though it’s close.  Based a bit on the story of Steve Kurtz, the SF in this book centers around tinkering with biological agents in home lab.  This is not so SF in itself, but in this story the protagonist, composer-teacher Peter Els, aims to tinker with bacterial DNA to a degree where he can code his music into it.  So the world of the book is the world of 2014, but with the science a bit speculative-ish…

PJE SYNOPSIS
See above, but then the FBI fears he might be a terrorist, so a chase ensues with many flashbacks along the way (Richard Powers style….)

REALLY A MUSICIAN?
YES, talks aptly and deeply about music and musicians.  Know full well the trials and tribulations of working creatively in music, finding performers, making recordings, etc.T ells a great story about Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, witnessed a Cage happening.

WHY A MUSICIAN?
Why a composer (hahaha)?  Someone who is a good tinkerer, used to be being alone with their thoughts.  Someone who is good at ‘theory’, though most composers, like this one, mostly fake it 😉  Also, good to have a protagonist who is intellectually well-rounded and curious, and has been for the past 50 years or so.

RECOMMENDED?
YES—moves along quickly with all kinds of drama and flashbacks, I enjoyed it.  Perhaps for non-musicians there’s a bit of lull here and there.  The drama with the daughter helps tie things together, but only as a touchstone and move-along for the plot.

© 2020 Peter J. Evans, theorist

Protagonist Musicians in SF, pt.8

TITLE: City of Dark Magic

AUTHOR: Magnus Flyte

YEAR: 2012

IS THIS SF?

YES?—action takes place in the now, and there is neither advanced technology, nor any parts of the present that we wouldn’t recognize. It is quite speculative, as the present tries to come to turns with the science of the past, and how it still seems to work. Ultimately, the reference to Prague as the “city of dark magic” is potentially explaining because of miniature-yet-local time warps.
PJE SYNOPSIS

After her mentor dies mysteriously in Prague while studying Beethoven-related manuscripts and letters, Sarah Weston, a graduate student in musicology as well as a pianist, travels to Prague to complete her mentor’s work, to figure out why he died, and to try to avoid death herself. Along the way, she meets a dwarf who may have been Tycho Brahe’s assisstant, unocvers who Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved” really was, and falls in love with the heir to the throne of the royal house of Prague. She also comes to experience a drug that allows one to experience time in layers based upon whatever location she’s in, and as such witnesses the dealings of former occupants and passers-through, including performances by Beethoven and experiments by Brahe. She also manages to expose the nefarious plottings of a traitorous and murderous U.S. Senator with Presidential aspirations.
REALLY A MUSICIAN?

YES, great musical descriptions regarding technique, dynamics, harmonies, ensemble skills, tempi, etc. Sarah Weston is a teacher as well, giving lessons to a young and blind piano prodigy. In fact, Weston’s kind of musicianship (ear training, manuscript studies, paper writing, exhibit preparation) is presented in stark relief to that of the prodigy, who just seems to have unnatural and innate abilities. Part of the backdrop is the opening of a museum dedicated to the Royal collection, and Weston meets experts in the fields of weaponry, fashion, fabrics, blah blah blah, and the fact that the author chooses Weston above the the others as the focal point, elevates Music to my mind. 
WHY A MUSICIAN?

Someone with a good ear, with heightened perceptual abilities. Someone whose typical day-to-day experiences are the connection of old papers to current people. Someone who accepts the magical yet also sets their noise to the grind-stone as a matter of course.  Beethoven is the link between Brahe and the present, so why not a musicologist?    It is also great that the musician-protagonist has multiple and complicated facets to her character.
RECOMMENDED?

YES, not pure SF, but there is enough science, and a lot of throwing different time periods into relief. Reads really quickly and easily—there’s a lot of humor, and a lot of sex, as well as a race against the clock within a plot of evil intrigue. Kind of like Dan Brown, perhaps, but better, funnier, and more believable.
© 2016 Peter J. Evans, theorist

Protagonist Musicians in SF, pt.7

TITLE: The Glass Harmonica
AUTHOR: Louise Marley
YEAR: 2000

IS THIS SF?
YES—a bit in the future (2018) advances in medical technology, transportation, large-scale live-stream broadcasting. concert-hall projections and sound manipulation as a kind of medical therapy.

PJE SYNOPSIS
There are two young women who play the glass harmonica, Eilish (early teens?) who works with Benjamin Franklin in developing and promoting the instrument in London, 1760s, and Erin (mid-20s?) who plays a modern version of the instrument professionally to much acclaim, often playing compositions by her brother in the U.S. and England, 2018.  In the 1760s Eilish goes mad and dies, most likely due to lead poisoning.  She then ‘haunts’ the Erin, who then tries to figure out who the girl from the 1760s was.  At the same time, Erin’s brother Charlie, tries to cure his paralyzed legs via new aural therapy, where patients align psycho-acoustic beats to stimulate the body to rejuvenate damaged nerves.

REALLY A MUSICIAN?
YES, great musical descriptions regarding technique, dynamics, harmonies, ensemble skills, tempi, etc., mostly though Erin’s narrative.  Eilish has a good memory for tunes, advises Franklin regarding intonation, and also teaches a professional harpsichordist how to play the glass harmonica.

WHY A MUSICIAN?
It’s all about the vibrations, stupid.  They account for the glass harmonica ethereal tone, (which was long rumored to drive people to madness if exposed to it for too long), how Eilish is able to haunt Erin, and how Charlie is eventually able to heal.  Plus being a musician opens differing doors for each of the protagonists—Eilish goes from being a impoverished waif to a respected member of Franklin’s household, while Erin can fly across the Atlantic at will, get access to different concert halls and gets a chance to play what we suppose if Eilish’s instrument though it is part of a museum exhibit.

RECOMMENDED?
YES, though listed in my library as “Young-Adult” this was quite an engaging read, well-written, well-aced, well-researched

© 2016 Peter J. Evans, theorist

Protagonist Musicians in SF, pt.6

TITLE: Year Zero
AUTHOR: Rob Reid
YEAR: 2012

IS THIS SF?
YES—Essentially an alien contact story, with interfering aliens and their technology, methods of instantly moving from one part of the galaxy to another, life-like holographic projections, aliens of strange design and proportions, etc.

PJE SYNOPSIS
The re-hashed idea that Aliens are overwhelmed by the Music of Earth, but the twist for this plot is that they owe us Royalties for billions of unliscensed plays throughout the perpetuity of the known universe.

REALLY A MUSICIAN?
No, there are no musician-protagonists, though bands and tunes of varying degrees of popularity are referenced. The protagonist is name Nick Carter.  The two alien interlopers are named Carly and Frampton, if that helps

WHY A MUSICIAN?
Musicians are the generators of the commodity in question, and as such are not to be given a place in the story.

RECOMMENDED?
NO, though parts are funny, it reads largely as a thought-experiment for intellectual-property lawyers, full of the requisite inside jokes and navel-gazings, and as such can be skipped. Michael Gruber’s The Book of Air and Shadows is much more successful, and entertaining, in this regard. Though promoted as such, the humor and absurdity of this book come nowhere near the levels and zaniness of Douglas Adams.

© 2016 Peter J. Evans, theorist

…after reading Part II of Don Quixote

…after reading Part II of Don Quixote

The first part is more widely known, with the famous adventures of the windmills, galley prisoners, wineskins, Sancho being tossed in the air…

The second book, I think, is less well known, the adventures less striking, the misdeeds not so numerous, but it is perhaps more ‘modern’ in feel than the first.  DQ awakes in his sick-bed to find that someone has written a book about him! People he meets in the second part… know the first part!

A list, in a somewhat random order:

  • Happy 400th Anniversary!!!
    (originally published in 1615)
  • Governmental policy of deporting Muslims? (more below)
  • The "student" as the catalyst/final decider
  • The nobel class:
    • How cruel they can be!
    • They sure do have a lot of free time and unlimited resources!
  • What is it like to be an accidental pop phenom?
  • Oh, to be almost finished writing the sequel to your book, when you learn that some unknown author has done it for you already!
  • Who is the author?
  • Who is the book?

In Book 1, the reader sees DQ as a crazy guy, inventing impossible situations to replace the mundane reality, “through a glass darkly”
In Book 2, the reader sees situations foisted upon DQ, though since they are staged by Duke and Duchess (and not the byproduct of DQ’s imagination) they are quite real.

The puppet show in the early chapters is actually kind of a pre-figuring of the treatment by Duke and Duchess. One of the characters wrongly attacked in Book 1 comes back to ‘attack’ DQ via unkind representation on the mini-stage. DQ violently attacks the stage, perhaps in order to silence the critics and various other mis-representations. He is afforded no such luxury with Duke and Duchess, who effectively never allow his third sally to ever get going.

Sancho Panza’s governance actually seems quite effective, even though it’s set up so that he should fall on his face. Attempts to humiliate Sancho are mean-spirited with considerable egg-on-the-face.

Of particular poignance is when Sancho meets Ricote, a Moorish man from his hometown who was forced to flee due to religious persecution.  Later, we learn that this man’s daughter, Ana Felix, is referred to herself as Christian Moorish and is to marry a Christian, with approval from her father, a kind of not-too-subtle “love conquers all” subtext.

In that regard, it is fascinating that Cervantes chooses Cide Hamete Benegeli as a lens through which to refract DQ… Is Cervantes hiding behind a foreigner, deflecting responsibility? Is the Moorish source wiser than the Castilian translator?  A Spanish treasure is actually of Moorish provenance?  

Two more things…

  • a la Tristram Shandy—will we ever know what happened in the Cave of Montesinos? DQ promises that he will tell Sancho (and us) later, but he never does…
  • a la Monty Python’s Cheese Shop Sketch—DQ and Sancho are flustered by an innkeeper who says he’s got the best and most plentiful food, and that they simply need to request what they desire, but it turns out the possibilities are quite severely limited!

© 2016 Peter J. Evans, theorist (though this post was started in 2015, believe me!)

Protagonist Musicians in SF, part 4

TITLE: Cowboy Feng’s Space Bar and Grille
AUTHOR: Steven Brust
YEAR: 1990

IS THIS SF?
YES—explosions, atomic  bombs, epidemiology, non-terrestrial colonization, time travel, etc.  There is also a Wild-West feel to the book, with most of the action (murders, bomb threats, shoot-outs, expository dialogue) being centered around the bar and its patrons. This is also reflected in the throwback weapons that the bar-folk arm themselves with, including revolvers, rifles, knives, etc.  As an additional anachronism, the bar-band specializes in Irish music!

PJE SYNOPSIS
Goodguys from the future devise a means to go back in time to try and find the rationale behind nuclear decimation of colonies by the Badguys.  The means is a bar that uses “hasn’t it always been there?” technology to blend in to the environs so the crew (and the house musicians) can both blend in and investigate.

REALLY A MUSICIAN?
YES-Protagonist plays the banjo, describes usages of different chords and scales, talks with others about instrumentation, phrase lengths, adjustments in vocal harmonies and tempos.

WHY A MUSICIAN?
In terms of the unfolding of the plot, it’s good to have non-task specific people (compared to cooks, bartenders, etc.) with lots of free time in your group, allowing time and opportunity for socialization, intermingling, investigating, getting out into the local environs. Additionally, the musicians also attract other musicians as a kind of first contact. Eventually the Goodguys even grabb one from the Badguys when the shit starts to hit the fan. SPOILER: it turns out the our narrator-musician happens to be the lynchpin of the whole mission, in other words, the musician is actually the brains behind the scenes.

RECOMMENDED?
YES—Well writen, good use of characters, plot intrigue.  The writing has that 80s / 90s feel to it; not really cyberpunk, not really hard SF, not really post-PKD, and the action is pretty spread out, so a lot of the novel is people hanging out, playing music, making conversation, developing relationships, etc. This a good thing, as it acts as a foil for the last third of the novel where things start to get intense.

© 2015 Peter J. Evans, theorist

Protagonist Musicians in SF, pt. 3

TITLE: Soul Music
AUTHOR: Terry Pratchett
YEAR: 1994

IS THIS SF?
If by ‘S’ you mean ‘Science’ then no, but if you mean ‘Speculative’ then yes.  Pratchett’s DiscWorld is a stripped down version of our own, allowing him to superimpose select aspects of our world over his own, with much irony and hilarity ensuing.

PJE SYNOPSIS
This book is too intricate to blogly-summarize it well.   The protagonist, Imp Y Celyn, is a harpist who works hard, yet dreams of making it Big Time.  He does achieve the big time, but seemingly only for magical reasons (such is the modis operandi of the DiscWorld novels) and spends the bulk of the novel trying to understand what he’s doing or how things are happening.  The magic attracts the attention of Death’s granddaughter, etc.

REALLY A MUSICIAN?
YES-then-KINDA-then-REALLY NO!!!  Protagonist starts as an actual musician (harpist) who gains stardom not by his efforts but rather via a magical guitar which unwittingly propels him to rock stardom. At the end of the book he has forgotten everything and is now an apprentice to the local fish and chips seller.

WHY A MUSICIAN?
Having a musician become a music-dumb rock star deepens the irony quite severely.  Do stars have talent? What is it that makes them stars? Who makes them stars?  What does it mean  to be a star?  Do you need talent to be a star?  Does talent get in the way of being a start?  Do you have the star-making talent to be a star?

RECOMMENDED?
YES—Funny, apt, valid, witty—the arc of the love story is great! There’s just not much music going on, but in this ironic take on music industry, itinerant musicians and superstardom, that’s pretty much the point—the music gets lost in the hype…

© 2014 Peter J. Evans, theorist

Protagonist Musicians in SF, pt.2—Erich Zann

TITLE: Music of Erich Zann (available here)
AUTHOR: H.P. Lovecraft
YEAR: 1922

PJE SYNOPSIS
A perpetually poor student in Paris finds an affordable residence in a part of the city that doesn’t actually exist, but seemed to for a short while. While living on the fifth floor, he hears music, eerie music, disconcerting music, coming from the sixth floor and wants to find out more.  He meets Erich Zann who plays viol(!).  By day/evening Zann plays for theater orchestras, but by night/early morning plays music for an audience beyond……..  When our poor student meets EZ, says he wants to meet/listen, EZ humors him at first with some typical classics. Student is curious about the other music, EZ sends him away, mortified to know that student has been eavesdropping. EZ later relents, allowing student to witness him playing the “music” for something not of this world/time/space/cosmic psychology.  Student flees in horror, tries to return, but can never find the neighborhood ever again.

REALLY A MUSICIAN?
Yes!
1) EZ plays viol for crying out loud!  Though HPL did not know much about music, we are given the impression that he is technically proficient, musically knowledgeable, etc.
2) Despite constant playing and practicing, EZ can still only afford to live in the cheapest parts of town
3) EZ hates to know that other people are listening to him when he is not performing.

WHY A MUSICIAN?
Music is the most ephemeral of the arts, and HPL takes that to a further extreme—ephemeral to the point of supernatural.

CONCLUSIONS?
As with most HPL, the narrator is a unwitting-observer, so the reader is not sure what it is exactly that EZ is doing, or where he’s getting his music from.  One wonders if he is attempting to communicate with the beyond through music, or if he’s taking dictation for new ideas, though his reticence does not lend itself towards the latter.  One could read this short story as a play on the adage “Music soothes the savage beast”.

RECOMMENDED?
Yes.  HPL called this one of his favorites, and it does have a certain flavor and pacing that stands out from the rest of his oeuvre. Short and crisp, psychologically compelling enough to be a gateway to the rest of HPL’s work.

© 2014 Peter J. Evans, theorist

Protagonist Musicians in SF, pt. 1

TITLE: We Who Are About To…
AUTHOR: Joanna Russ
YEAR: 1975

PJE SYNOPSIS
The protagonist is a musicologist who just happens to be female.  Due to an accident to the faster-than-light-speed drive, a ship is forced to land on an uninhabited planet millions of light years from anywhere. Protagonist suggests that doom is inevitable, while other passengers suggest attempting ‘colonization’. Protagonist is on the side of pragmatism: though things seem OK for now, air, water, plants could be partially poisonous—-days are too long, weather too dry for cultivation, etc. Among the other passengers are a family with a teenage daughter (Lori), a jock, a ‘professor of ideas’, and two younger women, one of whom is en route to military training.  Add to that, the protagonist hordes pharmaceuticals and micro-weaponry, and goes to great lengths to conceal these, so that even when she is found out and thoroughly searched some of her stash remains undiscovered. This, along with some ‘code-speak’ she attempts with the trainee, suggests that she might be an undercover agent of some sort. Without  totally giving it away, let’s just say her viewpoint prevails in the end (for those who have read this book, please note the irony…)

REALLY A MUSICIAN?
YES! Protagonist claims to be a scholar of John Dowland in particular and Late Renaissance/Early Baroque in general. In the early parts of the book she sings songs (including some by Dowland) around the camp-fire, to help calm the child etc.

WHY A MUSICIAN?
Protagonist spends much time in a dark and secluded cave, so obviously a musician would be be able to handle that duty… Protagonist is also equipped with a voice-activated recorder, enabling her to archive the plight. Additionally she often speaks derogatorily to the professor of ideas, contrasting her own practical approach with his idealistic approach, which is actually a quite remarkable statement regarding the study of music (which itself is often considered a-practical).  Additionally, she is also well-rounded, often quoting poetry and history, making her an ideal archivist for the group.  Also typically for a trained musician, she shows the requisite amount of disdain. Oddly enough when Lori says she wants to be a composer, the protagonist does not jump at this opportunity to teach or encourage, probably because of her pragmatism regarding the living situation.  The protagonist’s relationship with Lori is one of the few quasi-connective relationships she has with any of the group.

CONCLUSIONS?
All in all, the Protagonist is a musician inasmuch as she is the archetypal Storyteller, sharing songs and shaping histories about the current group and others long gone. She is also the one person in the group able to read celestial/solar activity in terms of day lengths and seasonal transitions.

RECOMMENDED?
YES—Good read, lots to chew on… and on…

© 2014 Peter J. Evans, theorist

Cloud Atlas: Text & Language

David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas is a daunting book—well to be technical, it’s actually six books in one—well to be even more accurate, it’s dauntingly six different types of texts:

1) Journal of Adam Ewing
2) Letters from Robert Frobisher
3) Luisa Rey, which in the next segment we learn that is a yet-to-be-published novel
4) Timothy Cavendish, which then appears as a movie in the next segment
5) Sonmi 451, which is a record of an interrogation
6) Sloosha’s Crossin’, which Zachry presents as part of an oral history

You notice in this list that I hedge my text a bit—all of these narratives are written for us, yet to the characters they appear as discrete bits of different “texts”.  Luisa Rey’s story is presented to Cavendish as a unpublished novel, and in Sonmi’s world we see that Cavendish’s story is portrayed in film.

Among these six strands, we see the following trend:

       past —————–> present ————> future
hard copies ————> fictions——–> oral traditions

This in itself is fascinating as a commentary; as we ‘progress’ hard copies will disappear and we will again have to rely upon ‘traditional’ methods despite (or maybe because of) advanced technology.

Within each of the six narratives, the characters deal with textual interpretations of their own worlds, Frobisher’s reading of Ewing’s journal, the handling of the safety report in Luisa’s world, the inspiration that Sonmi takes from Cavendish’s plight, Zachry religious reaction to seeing a video of Sonmi…  This is perhaps most interesting in that narrative of Robert Forbisher, who finds and reads Ewing’s diaries, and reports on them to Sixsmith.  At the same time Frobisher is entrusted to the papers, notes and compositions of Vyvyan Ayrs, finishing, transcribing and adding to his works.  This then becomes a textual battle of sorts, as the two argue over the true authorship of the Cloud Atlas sextet, which of course is ironic when taken in context with the rest of the novel; six different narratives each of differing, sometimes dubious, authorships.

The previous paragraphs describe a more noticeable aspect of the novel, a progression through the narratives and some of the links between them.  An even larger scope and somewhat less obvious design is created by the use of language throughout the entire novel.

1) 1850s English
2) Refined English, early 20th-Century educated prose
3) 1970s Thriller novel
4) ‘current’ Comedic Screenplay
5) Science Fiction, about 100 years distant?
6) Post-Earth slang, about 200 years distant?

The trend here is that the middle parts of the novel are, linguistically speaking, the parts that Mitchell’s audience (us) most readily identify with and can read with ease.  The first and last parts are symmetrically removed from that middle, both in terms of time and language.  The casual reader would perhaps get the gist of both (eventually) but would invariably struggle with the details.

Ewing’s journal is full of erudite, Classical references with a vocabulary that was normal for it’s day, as Ewing wittingly-constructs words from Greek and Latin roots. Taking place on a Pacific Island, of course, makes it that much more foreign, adding a layer of location-specific vocabulary (names of tribes, landmarks, etc.) to an already dense lexicon.

Zachry’s narrative is just as dense and foreign, only now the reader feels it is the narrator’s lack of formal education that creates the linguistic difficulty.  Contrary to Ewing’s style, Zachry seems to be lopping the ends off of some words, running others together, eliminating vowels (cf. the spelling of his name).

                          150 years                       NOW                  200? years
when:                     past —————-> present ————> future

effort to read:      much——————> none ————–> much

With such a design, perhaps Mitchell is meditating on the time spans of lasting-education and language, and in a way projecting the equation forward as a type of hypothesis—the language from 165 years ago is difficult for a current-day reader, so the language 200 years from now will be just as difficult?  Is that correct?  Does language have a 400-year lifespan? Adam and Zachry would not understand each other, but from our current vantage point we can appreciate both….

© 2014 Peter J. Evans, theorist