Rock On

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.