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From: DAA@MIT-MC.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Music in SF
Message-ID: <2830@topaz.ARPA>
Date: Sat, 20-Jul-85 15:10:20 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.2830
Posted: Sat Jul 20 15:10:20 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 21-Jul-85 23:19:38 EDT
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Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
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From: David A. Adler <DAA@MIT-MC.ARPA>


I have been reading through the messages citing references to music in
SF and SF in music and was surprised that no one has mentioned the works
of Somtow Sucharitkul. Some of you might recall that his works were
discussed a couple of months ago.

Since Sucharitkul composed music before he wrote SF, there are many
musical themes intertwined in his SF (at least in the Inquestor
series). Music is very important to a couple of the characters in the
Inquestor series and in one instance an entire city is genetically
altered so their voices create perfect harmony as they walk through
the streets and chant.

In FIRE FROM THE WINE DARK SEA, a collection of his short stories,
Sucharitkul included the theme song he was asked to write for Isaac
Asimov's SF Magazine. There are also a couple of interviews in the
collection in which he describes his musical "career." Personally I
have not heard the composition, but was told from a friend that it is
rather amusing.

Sucharitkul footnotes the music and breaks the work down into several
themes, including: fanfare ("every march should have a nice grand
fanfare"), generalized superhero theme, exotic alien princess theme
("every space opera has one"), obligatory hordes of evil, conflict,
triumph, and a distant rumbling of evil forces ("the obligatory 'I
shall return' line that leaves room for a sequel").

The interview, by Darrell Schweitzer, works through the life an times
of Somtow Sucharitkul. Schweitzer asks Sucharitkul about hhis early
career, which includded composing both poetry and music at a fairly
you age (early teens) as well as the development of his writing and
his philosophy of writing. When asked if there was any relation
between his music and writing, Sucharitkul responded that he didn't
see any barrier between the two, but thought he was much better at
writing music since he had more practice at it and he thought it was
easier to write in the first place.

Another composer who has written some work for SF Movies and other work
with SF in mind is Wendy Carlos (formerly Walter Carlos of "Switched-On
Bach" recordings with a Mood synthesizer). Wendy wrote the soundtrack for
TRON and has since written DIGITAL MOONSCAPES featuring her interpretations
of several of the moons in our solar system, mainly those of Jupiter and
Saturn, but those of Mercury and Earth as well. She explains in the 
commentary that comes with the recording that the work entitled "Europa"
has a hopeful ending: "beneath the cracked-ice surface there may be life
waiting to be thawed from its frozen prison as in Arthur C. Clarkes's 
2010."

Carlos has moved away from the Moog synthesizer and is now using what
she calls the LSI Philharmonic (and yes, LSI stands for Large Scale
Integration). She uses the new synthesizer with a "library" or
recorded voives to create the music. It is quite interesting and I
highly recommend it for those of you who like digitally synthesized
music.

-David Adler

< Schweitzer: You could want the meaning of life.
  Sucharitkul: It's in the dictionary. >