Why does a writer...or any artist...create?
Soundtrack
These are songs that have inspired parts of the Scattered Worlds Mosaic. It's a long display, so you might want to look at it in smaller chunks (acts).
Overture
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Echo's Children Balticon Tapes |
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Heather Alexander Cyberlite: Bayfilk 4 and 5 The power of the writer. |
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John Denver Windsong The Scattered Worlds Mosaic is a science-fiction epic. "Spirit," with its astronomical allusions ("Between the Swan and Hercules, where even dark clouds glow") and appeal to classical mythology ("Apollo taught me to rhyme, Orpheus taught me to play") is the ideal traditional Invocation of the Muses. |
Act I: Before the Pylistroph
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Vangelis Albedo 0.39 In the ever-building complexities of this instrumental piece, I see the development of life in the Galaxy, starting with self-replicating molecules and eventually leading to Intelligence. Life is music, and music is life. |
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Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazelwood Fairytales and Fantasies This haunting song gave me my first glimpse of the Daamin...ethereal guardians of secret knowledge, irresistably attractive...and infinitely treacherous. ("Flowers are the things we know /Secrets are the things we grow / Learn from us / Very much / Look at us / But do not touch . . . . ")
Although Daamin fur was so fine and so soft that it cried out to be stroked, they could not bear the touch of other races. |
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The Police Synchronicity The Daamin spend most of their lives in what they call the Forever Dreams, a world of nonlinear causality. I imagine that the experience must be somewhat like the worldview expressed in this song |
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Carl Orff Carmina Burana At first the Seven Races met in peace...but soon there was war. And the endless cycle, rise and fall, was begun. |
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Sergei Prokofiev Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet The Coruma created a war machine that was so efficient it led the Seven Races to unite in the Pylistroph. The people of the Gathered Worlds put away the things of war, and turned to peace. Or so they thought.... |
Act II: The Pylistroph
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Clam Chowder Spindrift The world of the Pylistroph was a simple, happy one graced by the presence of the Elder Spirits. |
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Clam Chowder Salvaged Of all the Elder Spirits, the wisest and most beloved was Jaseni, the Troubadour. |
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Abba The Visitors Timash, the Lover, always being pursued, always just beyond reach. Here I picture her meeting Jaseni in some seedy space station bar where he's been performing while she's been dancing and flirting. As the last of the drunks pass out, the two sit at a back table and she lets down her hair for a moment. They are, after all, many billions of years old...and they have "walked some strange and lonely treks." |
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Julie Andrews Mary Poppins That's her, sitting on the steps of St. Paul's: Maranna, the Mother Goddess, the Old Woman, the Bird Woman. In her pity she cares for every living thing that's small and helpless...and to her, everything is small and helpless. |
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Sergei Prokofiev A Celebration for Harp The Singing Stones are unique telepathic resonators, which concentrate all the thought and emotion in the Galaxy, and broadcast it as an ineffable music that only living minds can hear. Perhaps it sounds like this. |
Act III: Schism of the Hlutr/Flight of the Daamin
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Lotte Lenya Cabaret The Coruma's great war machine awakens and proclaims a totalitarian rule. The Daamin must make a terrible choice: stay, or flee into the vast, empty expanse of the Scattered Worlds? |
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Gustav Holst The Planets The Schism of the Hlutr and the Flight of the Daamin are the central events of Scattered Worlds history. The Daamin hero Ashli Sicne confounded the Gergathan and led her people to freedom. |
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Dan Fogelberg Innocent Age The Daamin were lonely in the nearly-empty Scattered Worlds. |
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The Muppets The Muppet Movie The Daamin longed to return to their lost home in the Gathered Worlds. |
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Dan Fogelberg Days of Future Passed Most of all, the Daamin missed the bright stars of the Galactic Core, and saddened in the knowledge that they would always be half-blind in the eternal night of the Scattered Worlds. |
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The Alan Parsons Project Ammonia Avenue On Nephestal, the Daamin constructed the Temple of All Worlds to honor the civilizations that they knew would develop in the Scattered Worlds. |
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Steeleye Span Portfolio This song reminds me of the endless procession of scholars and others who came to the Temple of All Worlds on Nephestal through the millions of years. |
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Dan Fogelberg Innocent Age Deep beneath the Temple of All Worlds on Nephestal, a temporal accident created the Gates of Time, shifting portals that open to other times and places. |
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The Mamas and the Papas Creeque Alley The Secluded Realm, hidden somewhere in the Scattered Worlds, preserves the civilization of the Pylistroph. |
Act IV: Empire of the Iaranori
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Suzanne Vega Pretty in Pink Istel, scion of the Elder Spirits, allies with the Secluded Realm. |
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The Doors L. A. Woman The Galactic Riders rose from the ashes of the Empire of the Iaranori to become a major force for peace and unity in the Scattered Worlds. |
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Julia Ecklar & Anne Harlan Prather Space Heroes and Other Fools The Galactic Riders brought hope to many cultures -- along with news from the rest of the Scattered Worlds. |
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Simon and Garfunkel Bookends With the fall of the Empire of the Iaranori, a long period of darkness settled in the Scattered Worlds. |
Act V: Virgo Wars
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Abba Visitors On Nephestal, the Watchers of the Stones contemplated the telepathic music of the Singing Stones, trying to divine meaning within the ineffable melodies. |
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The Alan Parsons Project Eye in the Sky A Watcher named Lirith heard a plaintive cry from the warrior Jel Haran, survivor of the million-year war between the Gathered Worlds and the Virgo Cultures. The song led rescuers to find Jel Haran floating in space in stasis. |
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The Alan Parsons Project Eye in the Sky They were the survivors of a war that destroyed their home planet. They moved to a new world, but brought the seeds of destruction along with them. |
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Abba Visitors Everyone thought the Lord of Strife vanquished and destroyed at the end of the million year war. They were wrong. |
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Suzanne Vega Suzanne Vega The peaceful Watcher girds herself for battle, while a presence from the past observes. |
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Benjamin Luxon & Bill Crofut Simple Gifts The power of the Watcher. |
Act VI: Avethellan Empire
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Clam Chowder Salvaged The Windmill was the symbol of the Avethellan Empire. |
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Bonnie Tyler Footloose Aemallana, the legendary Queen of Avethell, uses the Singing Stones to appeal for a champion to defeat the Gathered Worlds. |
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Clam Chowder Spindrift The Gathered Worlds are defeated again. |
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Leslie Fish Chickasaw Mountain After millennia of peace, the first hint that an ancient evil is once again rising. |
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Queen A Night at the Opera Aemallana is betrayed and evil takes over. |
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Bonnie Tyler Faster Than the Speed of Night The Last Galactic Rider rescues and preserves the heir of Aemallana and the Golden Throne of Avethell. |
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The Alan Parsons Project Eye in the Sky Avethell fell, but the music of the Singing Stones remained. |
Act VII: Dorascan Empire
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Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young So Far The Dorascans and the Kreen were both distant children of the Avethellans. Each had their own turn at Empire. |
Act X: Pre-Imperial Terra
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Vangelis Albedo 0.39 Terra. Earth. The homeworld of the Human race. I only wish there was a version of this song with metric units. That's the science geek in me. |
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Neil Diamond Tap Root Manuscript They have sweated beneath the same sun, looked up in wonder at the same moon, and wept when it was all done, for being done too soon. For being done too soon. For being done. |
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John Denver John Denver's Greatest Hits There's something about this song that, for me, captures one of the most essential parts of humanity. |
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Julia Ecklar To Touch the Stars This song is Leslie Fish's masterpiece. I hope Humans will still be singing it on far-off worlds in the distant future. |
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Donald Fagen The Nightfly I was born in the International Geophysical Year. This is the bright, optimistic future that I grew up believing in. It's a future I still think we can achieve. I hope the future of the Scattered Worlds can stand as an example of a future like this. |
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Heart Road Home The real Space Age didn't begin until ordinary people routinely left Earth for new frontiers, small personal vessels scattering to the planets and beyond. |
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Julia Ecklar & Leslie Fish Space Heroes and Other Fools This is another song that captures an essential part of what it means to be Human. Thank you, Rudyard Kipling. |
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Four Jacks and a Jill Master Jack This song was an obvious precursor of Penylle’s relationship with the mysterious hacker who sometimes called himself "Jack.". Four Jacks and a Jill were a South African folk/pop group of the 1960s. Looking back on it, this song is a pretty courageous attack on apartheid and a social system that used the educational system and restrictions on travel to keep citizens—particularly young people—ignorant of the rest of the world. |
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The Police Synchronicity Another version of the Marc-Penylle relationship. |
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Duras Sisters Rubenesque Miranda Maris, the Ivory Madonna. Larger than life. What more can I say? |
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Yes Yes Album This song helped me to get a handle on the relationship between a Nexus operative and his/her boss—in this case, I see Miranda as the White Queen and Damien saying “Move me onto any black square.” Of course, such a relationship can become damaging—unless the boss is wise enough to force her operative to fly on his own. In a way, this shows how the Miranda/Damien relationship contrasts with the Jack/Penylle one. |
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Peter Gabriel Peter Gabriel In this song I see the Nexus watching the U.N. and other governmental bodies, and becoming increasingly disgusted with the way nations play pointless, meaningless games with one another. Games Without Frontiers got me looking into Medecins sans Frontieres, and so was at least a partial inspiration for Jamiar Heavitree. |
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Supertramp Breakfast in America Here I see Damien’s dilemma…and the solution. As the book begins, Damien (like the singer) is waiting for someone to tell him “who he is.” And (as Miranda knows full well) any true answer to that question can only come from Damien himself. |
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Abba Super Trouper This is how Marc Hoister’s preaching—enhanced by Penylle—affected the population. And it’s a “dancing” tie-in. I don’t know, perhaps this song gave me the notion of “dancing” for the Ivory Madonna. |
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Original Cast La Cage aux Folles This song captures some of the outrageous feel I wanted for the Maris Institute. |
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Original Cast The Rocky Horror Picture Show In Dance for the Ivory Madonna this became the Hyperspace Jig. I still like the original better. This particular version is an extended and enhanced dance mix from Europe. I like to think that this is the version that played at the Institute on Friday nights…. |
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The Alan Parsons Project Eye in the Sky Another dimension of the relationship between Penylle and Marc Hoister. I always mis-hear the fourth line as “Well it’s my need, but always your connection,” which seems to connote a junkie/supplier dynamic. It’s that, I think, that informed Marc’s supplying of prolactin—combined with a synthetic opiate—to Penylle. |
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Guess Who Best of the Guess Who To me, this song is all about Marc gloating over mistakes that Miranda has made. I picture the tone as gleeful as Marc anticipates Miranda’s fall and ultimate destruction. |
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Neil Young Decade The first verse inspired InfoPol’s raid on the Institute “I dreamed I saw the knights in armor coming (InfoPol), saying something about a queen (Miranda).” In the second verse I see Penylle’s reaction to being told about Marc’s treachery. “I was thinking about what a friend had said, hoping it was a lie.” The third verse, of course, is the source for Jack/Marc’s mercy dream at the end of the book. I think this is probably the root of the entire “migration to Mars” theme. |
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Händel Messiah This played, endlessly repeating, during the hours I was writing the “Dagon’s House” scene. It’s a wonder my housemates didn’t strangle me. |
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Suzanne Vega 99.9 F° I think Suzanne Vega’s jagged, brutal song perfectly captures the anxiety that gripped a world which had seen plague after cruel plague sweep through defenseless populations. “The thickening of fear” is such a marvelous phrase for a constant doom that hung over the world, just as the threat of thermonuclear war was a constant doom hanging over the world in which Miranda grew up. |
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Dan Fogelberg Dan Fogelberg Greatest Hits Miranda’s plans, Marc Hoister’s plans, the plans of the AIs—Damien and Penylle are parts of the plan, but whose? |
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Gordon Lightfoot If You Could Read My Mind Originally, I included this song in the hope that it would help me get a handle on WWH, especially in the scene where Damien and Penylle go to ask his help. Well, it didn’t turn out to be very much of a direct inspiration—but I think some of the otherworldly tone crept into what I actually wrote. Oh, and I do know that this song was the reason that WWH had settled on an island…. |
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Billy Joel Storm Front This song, as a reflection of the history of the Baby Boom generation, belonged here. It obviously informed a lot of my thinking about the Boomers as a superogranism. And, of course, finally deciphering the line “children of thalidomide” was what gave me the idea of having Penylle’s mutation spring from the drug miruvorane…. |
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Manfred Mann's Earth Band Roaring Silence The line is “revved up like a deuce,” and it is a clear reference to the famous “little deuce coupe.” I don’t know why people hate this song so much. Not only is it full of enough evocative names and images to inspire a whole shelf of books, but Manfred Mann’s orchestrated version is so superior, dramatically and in every other way, to Springsteen’s sleepy, mumbled variation. This song, more than any other, influenced Dance for the Ivory Madonna. In fact, this song informs just about every chapter of the book. In particular, in the entire song I see the framework of the Terrad meta-program: that moment when Penylle and Damien brought all of cyberspace to a halt and changed the course of worlds ("With a boulder on my shoulder, feelin’ kinda older, I tripped the merry-go-round; with this very unpleasin’ sneezin’ and wheezin’ the calliope crashed to the ground.”) You’ll find much more of the song, though, in the book. There are the Nexus codenames: Silicon Sister, Go-Kart Mozart, Lil’ Hurly-Burly. There are capsule characterizations: Marc Hoister is “some brimstone-baritone, anti-cyclone Rolling Stone preacher from the East” and Penylle is “some silicon(e) sister with her manager mister.” While I didn’t deliberately try to match events of the book to images from the song, there are echoes all over the place. I’m sure that the police helicopter in Kampala bears some relationship to the line “Little Hurly-Burly came by in his curly-whirly and asked me if I needed a ride.” Likewise, “Indians in the summer” relates to the Navajo homeland and the Dekoa flu outbreak. Besides all this, the surreal images of the song certainly got me thinking about the different ways that the AIs thought and communicated. This was another song that I played constantly over and over while I was writing the last chapters of the book. |