ROCK ON
PAULA GURAN
Copyright © 2012 by Paula Guran.
Cover art by Scott Grimando.
Cover design by Telegraphy Harness.
Ebook design by Neil Clarke.
All stories are copyrighted to their respective authors, and used here with their permission. An extension of this copyright page can be found here.
ISBN: 978-1-60701-374-7 (ebook)
ISBN: 978-1-60701-315-0 (trade paperback)
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This one was always supposed to be for you, Erik.
Damn it.
Erik John Guran
October 6, 1989 – June 9, 2012
If you never heard him sing
I guess you won’t too soon.
—“Tonight’s the Night,”
Neil Young
Contents
Introduction: Liner Notes • Paula Guran
Flying Saucer Rock and Roll • Howard Waldrop
Bob Dylan, Troy Jonson, and the Speed Queen • F. Paul Wilson
Stone • Edward Bryant
Mercenary • Lawrence C. Connolly
The Erl-King • Elizabeth Hand
We Love Lydia Love • Bradley Denton
Last Rising Sun • Graham Joyce
Freezone • John Shirley
Hobnoblin Blues • Elizabeth Bear
Then Play On • Greg Kihn
The Feast of Saint Janis • Michael Swanwick
That Was Radio Clash • Charles de Lint
Rock On • Pat Cadigan
Arise • Poppy Z. Brite
Wunderkindergarten • Marc Laidlaw
Paedomorphosis • Caitlín R. Kiernan
Odeed • David J. Schow
Voodoo Child • Graham Masterton
We See Things Differently • Bruce Sterling
At Budokan • Alastair Reynolds
Mourningstar • Del James
Jeff Beck • Lewis Shiner
“ . . . How My Heart Breaks When I Sing This Song . . . ” • Lucius Shepard
The Big Flash • Norman Spinrad
Acknowledgements
About the Editor
Introduction: Liner Notes
Paula Guran
Track 1: “Is Rock and Roll Still Relevant?”
“Of course it is,” he said, twenty-two and immersed in popular music of all kinds, a singer, composing his own stuff, with an encyclopedic knowledge of pop music.
“But it is really different now. Music is fragmented,” I replied. “You can download anything—new, old, obscure, whatever—plug it in your ears. For people my age, people who shared the experience of the Beatles or Jimi Hendrix as kids, it was a generational thing. Glue. Music brought us together. We found meaning in listening to the same stuff, it shaped our attitudes.”
“For my generation, rap is probably our ‘meaningful’ music. But you hear what we listen to—the best of rock, pop, R&B, jazz, world music. What survives will survive. That’s what classic means.”
“So rock’s not dead? It doesn’t just belong in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame up the road in Cleveland or in the hearts of old fogies like me?”
“Mom. This is Akron. It’s not just Devo and Chrissie Hynde. Now it’s The Black Keys.”
“Hey hey, my my, rock and roll will never die?”
“Yeah, but Neil Young is Canadian.”
“Ha. Akron connection! Who inspired ‘Hey, Hey, My, My’? Mark Mothersbaugh. Devo.”
“Why do you know these things?”
“Rust never sleeps?”
“That’s the other thing.”
“What?”
“We communicate through it. You get my allusions. I get yours.”
“So, for the record . . . I mean I’m asking you this stuff for this anthology . . . you are saying rock brings the generations together?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“I gotta go.”
Track 2: “It’s Only Rock and Roll”
Please. Don’t try to define it. You can’t. Paraphrasing Billy Joel: funk, punk, old junk, blues, stews, reggae, shred play, hip-hop, good pop, Motown, no town, next phase, new wave, dance craze, anyways . . . it’s still rock and roll to me.
Track 3: “I Don’t See the Connection Between
Science Fiction/Fantasy and Rock”
Doesn’t matter who sang that tune, but someone did when hearing of this anthology. They were dead wrong. Which words fill in the blanks below, “rock” or “science fiction”?
“[Blank] asks, and sometimes tries to answer, all manner of questions. And it reflects a broad spectrum of attitudes, yearnings, fulfillments, fantasies. [Blank] can be personal or collective, apolitical or polemical. It can be banal or piercingly evocative.”
The correct answer is rock and the quote is from music critic Nat Hentoff. But it could just as easily be science fiction. Speculative fiction writers and rock musicians both make up lies that tell us something about the truth of being human.
Track 4: “Long Cuts”
Outside of these stories and many other short works, there is a long tradition of science fiction and fantasy novels with rock and roll connections (or close enough, be it blues, R&B, or pop). Here’s a list of some of the more notable, if not always recommended, novels (alphabetically by author):
Lost Souls (1992), Poppy Z. Brite
War for the Oaks (1982), Emma Bull
Synners (1991), Pat Cadigan
Wrack and Roll (1986), Bradley Denton
Buddy Holly Is Alive and Well on Ganymede (1991), Bradley Denton
Joplin’s Ghost (2005), Tananarive Due
My Soul to Take (2011), Tananarive Due
Jim Morrison’s Adventures in the Afterlife (1999), Mick Farren
Idoru (1996), William Gibson
Illyria (2006), Elizabeth Hand
Heart-Shaped Box (2007), Joe Hill
Bold As Love series: Bold As Love (2001), Castles Made of Sand (2002), Midnight Lamp (2003), Band of Gypsies (2005), and Rainbow Bridge (2006), Gwyneth Jones
Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra (2001), Paul Kantner
Silk (1998), Caitlín R. Kiernan
Big Rock Beat (2000), Greg Kihn
Mojo Hand (2002), Greg Kihn
The Five (2012), Robert McCammon
The Armageddon Rag (1983), George R. R. Martin
Flesh Guitar (1998), Geoff Nicholson
Soul Music: A Novel of Discworld (1994), Terry Pratchett
WVMP Series: Wicked Game (2008), Bad to the Bone (2009), and Bring on the Night (2010), Jeri Smith Ready
The Vampire Lestat (1991), Anne Rice
First two books of Persephone Alcmedi Series: Wicked Circle (2009) and Hallowed Circle (2009), Linda Robertson
The Kill Riff (1988), David J. Schow (Okay, it is not sf or fantasy, but it is horror)
Glimpses (1993), Lewis Shiner
Deserted Cities of the Heart (1998), Lewis Shiner
City Come-A-Walkin’ (1980), John Shirley
Eclipse (1985), John Shirley
Echo and Narcissus (2003), Mark Siegel
The Scream (1988), John Skipp and Craig Spector
Vampire Junction
(1984), Valentine (1992), and Vanitas (1995), S. P. Somtow
Little Heroes (1987), Norman Spinrad
Orbital Decay (1989), Allen Steele
The Armageddon Chord (2011), Jeremy Wagner
Elvissey (1993), Jack Womack
Elizabeth Hand’s Illyria deals with performance, but her other novels are often permeated with rock; the characters tend to be part of the lifestyle rather than musicians. Still, her novels Black Light, Generation Loss, and Available Dark are close to being “rock novels” (although I’m stretching genre definition here to include the last.)
Musicians often play roles in the work of Charles de Lint, but most would not term them rockers. Still, some of the flavor is there, especially in The Onion Girl.
Stephen King—who obviously wanted to grow up to be a rock star—frequently makes references to rock in his novels and it’s integral to at least one short story (“You Know They Have a Helluva Band”). He’s yet to write a novel with music integral to the plot; Christine, however, comes close to having a beat you can dance to.
Author Michael Moorcock has been closely connected to rock through the band Hawkwind and, to a lesser extent Blue Öyster Cult—he wrote lyrics for both, performed with the former as well as other bands—his fiction is often informed by rock, but seldom about it. Even though his enduring character Elric is the epitome of a rock-and-roll nihilist anti-hero, he’s not a rock star. Another Moorcock character, Jerry Cornelius, manages to get involved in the music business in a non-genre novel written based on the the Sex Pistols mockumentary movie The Great Rock ’n’ Roll Swindle.
Another nongenre novel, Spider Kiss (originally Rockabilly), was one of the first (1961) fictional dissections of rock-and-roll’s ruinous lifestyle; it tells of the rise and fall of a manufactured rocker. Written pre-Beatles when rock looked like a passing fad (Buddy Holly died in 1959, Little Richard sang gospel from 1957-1962, Elvis Presley was in the army between March 1958 and March 1960, Jerry Lee Lewis was in disgrace, Alan Freed’s career was over due to a payola scandal . . . ) it presents an interesting perspective.
The Bordertown series of anthologies, although not novels, should also be noted. [Will Shetterly’s YA novels Elsewhere (1992) and Nevernever (1993) also take place in the invented world, as does Emma Bull’s Finder (2003).] The stories are set in a world, created by Terri Windling, “where magic meets rock and roll.” In this city bordering both the human and the faerie worlds, neither magic nor technology follow any rules. Bordertown is famous for its music, and you can find just about any kind, but rock of many varieties is an important part of the mix. After a thirteen-year hiatus since the previous volume, anthology Welcome to Bordertown, edited by Holly Black and Ellen Kushner, was published in 2011.
Track 5: “(Don’t Even) Start Me Up”
Since this is an anthology of fiction, I’m not going to get into speculative fiction’s influence on rock—trust me, there’s plenty of it. Science fiction fed rock from Sheb Wooley’s “Purple People Eater” to David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars to Parliament’s Mothership Connection to Radiohead’s OK Computer to Nine Inch Nails’ Year Zero to Janelle Monáe’s The ArchAndroid . . . and continues to do so.
The same with fantasy: prog rock could never have progged without it, Led Zeppelin must have smoked J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard still lives in heavy metal, H. P. Lovecraft has inspired numerous bands, and Alice Cooper was only the first to personify dark fantasy on stage with a backbeat. Hell, the roots of rock are tangled in fantasy: Robert Johnson supposedly met the devil at a crossroads and worried about a hellhound on his trail.
And no, I will not discuss “wrock.”
Track 6: “Don’t Get Me Wrong”
There are minor aspects to some of the older stories herein that demonstrate that speculation is just that: speculating. Who needs sockets in a wireless world? Digitized recording, downloads, Guitar Hero, Garage Band, iPods, and smartphones that can hold 28,000 songs, do-it-yourself distribution—who knew? Ultimately, old tech doesn’t affect the heart and soul of any of these stories and there’s still tech-yet-to-come (maybe) in many, in others the speculation has been at least somewhat fulfilled. Of course there’s supernatural doings in some stories—but rock itself is magical and transformative.
Track 7: “Are You Experienced?”
[Test . . . test . . . one, two, three . . . rock and rollll!]
Welcome to the first (and, so far, only) anthology ever of science fiction and fantasy stories about rock and roll . . . although about may not be the proper word. Some of the stories are certainly about rock, others are more informed by the music, but rock and roll is integral to them all. Like the music itself, some stories are nice and easy, but some of these go to eleven . . . or maybe twelve.
Horns up!
Paula Guran
June 2012
Flying Saucer Rock and Roll
Howard Waldrop
They could have been contenders.
Talk about Danny and the Juniors, talk about the Spaniels, the Contours, Sonny Till and the Orioles. They made it to the big time: records, tours, sock hops at $500 a night. Fame and glory.
But you never heard of the Kool-Tones, because they achieved their apotheosis and their apocalypse on the same night, and then they broke up. Some still talk about that night, but so much happened, the Kool-Tones get lost in the shuffle. And who’s going to believe a bunch of kids, anyway? The cops didn’t and their parents didn’t. It was only two years after the president had been shot in Dallas, and people were still scared. This, then, is the Kool-Tones’ story:
Leroy was smoking a cigar through a hole he’d cut in a pair of thick, red wax lips. Slim and Zoot were tooting away on Wowee whistles. It was a week after Halloween, and their pockets were still full of trick-or-treat candy they’d muscled off little kids in the projects. Ray, slim and nervous, was hanging back, “We shouldn’t be here, you know? I mean, this ain’t the Hellbenders’ territory, you know? I don’t know whose it is, but, like, Vinnie and the guys don’t come this far.” He looked around.
Zoot, who was white and had the beginnings of a mustache, took the yellow wax-candy kazoo from his mouth. He bit off and chewed up the big C pipe. “I mean, if you’re scared, Ray, you can go back home, you know?”
“Nah!” said Leroy. “We need Ray for the middle parts.” Leroy was twelve years old and about four feet tall. He was finishing his fourth cigar of the day. He looked like a small Stymie Beard from the old Our Gang comedies.
File still wore the cut-down coat he’d taken with him when he’d escaped from his foster home.
He was staying with his sister and her boyfriend. In each of his coat pockets he had a bottle: one Coke and one bourbon.
“We’ll be all right,” said Cornelius, who was big as a house and almost eighteen. He was shaped like a big ebony golf tee, narrow legs and waist blooming out to an A-bomb mushroom of arms and chest. He was a yard wide at the shoulders. He looked like he was always wearing football pads.
“That’s right,” said Leroy, taking out the wax lips and wedging the cigar back into the hole in them. “I mean, the kid who found this place didn’t say anything about it being somebody’s spot, man.”
“What’s that?” asked Ray.
They looked up. A small spot of light moved slowly across the sky. It was barely visible, along with a few stars, in the lights from the city.
“Maybe it’s one of them UFOs you’re always talking about, Leroy,” said Zoot.
“Flying saucer, my left ball,” said Cornelius. “That’s Telstar. You ought to read the papers.”
“Like your mama makes you?” asked Slim.
“Aww . . . ” said Cornelius.
They walked on through the alleys and the dark streets. They all walked like a man.
“This place is Oz,” said Leroy.
“Hey!” yelled Ray, and his voice filled the area, echoed back and forth in the darkness, rose in volume, died away.
“Wow.”
They were on what had been the loading dock of an old freight and storage company. It must have been closed sometime during the Korean War or maybe in the unimaginable eons before World War II. The building took up most of the block but the loading area on the back was sunken and surrounded by the stone wall they had climbed. If you stood with your back against the one good loading door, the place was a natural amphitheater.
Leroy chugged some Coke, then poured bourbon into the half-empty bottle. They all took a drink, except Cornelius, whose mother was a Foursquare Baptist and could smell liquor on his breath three blocks away.
Cornelius drank only when he was away from home two or three days.
“Okay, Kool-Tones,” said Leroy. “Let’s hit sonic notes.”
They stood in front of the door, Leroy to the fore, the others behind him in a semicircle: Cornelius, Ray, Slim, and Zoot.
“One, two, three,” said Leroy quietly, his face toward the bright city beyond the surrounding buildings.
He had seen all the movies with Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers in them and knew the moves backwards. He jumped in the air and came down, and Cornelius hit it: “Bah-doo, bah-doo, bah-doo-uhh.”
It was a bass from the bottom of the ocean, from the Marianas Trench, a voice from Death Valley on a wet night, so far below sea level you could feel the absence of light in your mind. And then Zoot and Ray came in: “Oooh-oooh, ooh-oooh,” with Leroy humming under, and then Slim stepped out and began to lead the tenor part of “Sincerely,” by the Crows. And they went through that one perfectly, flawlessly, the dark night and the dock walls throwing their voices out to the whole breathing city.
“Wow,” said Ray, when they finished, but Leroy held up his hand, and Zoot leaned forward and took a deep breath and sang: “Dee-dee-woo-oo, dee-eee-wooo-oo, dee-uhmm-doo-way.”
And Ray and Slim chanted: “A-weem-wayy, a-wee,-wayyy.”
And then Leroy, who had a falsetto that could take hair off an opossum, hit the high notes from “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” and it was even better than the first song, and not even the Tokens on their number two hit had ever sounded greater.
Then they started clapping their hands, and at every clap the city seemed to jump with expectation, joining in their dance, and they went through a shaky-legged Skyliners-type routine and into: “Hey-ahh-stah-huh, hey-ahh-stuh-uhh,” of Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs’ “Stay,” and when Leroy soared his “Hoh-wahh-yuh?” over Zoot’s singing, they all thought they would die.
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