Abstract
Having focused so far on the portrayal of science fiction in music, this final chapter flips things round to examine the way various musical topics have been handled in SF. First there’s the question of how music will evolve in future—will it embrace other senses besides hearing, or maybe even exploit extra-sensory perception? One author who had a lifelong passion for music was Philip K, Dick, and we take a look at his treatment of the subject in novels like Flow My Tears the Policeman Said and VALIS—the latter, incidentally, being the subject of an excellent opera itself. Finally we ask the all-important question: what would extraterrestrials make of Earth music?
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Notes
- 1.
This is essentially a pun, since it’s how many English-speakers pronounce the name “Bach”.
- 2.
Over a decade after Blish’s story was written, it’s worth noting.
- 3.
That’s what Brunner’s description sounds like, although the story was written several years before lava lamps were invented.
- 4.
Ironically, with a running time of around four hours, Parsifal could benefit from being compressed in time itself.
- 5.
“Flow My Tears”, the man from The Police said.
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May, A. (2020). Speculations on a Musical Theme. In: The Science of Sci-Fi Music. Science and Fiction. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47833-9_6
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