The Machinery of Night

BlogHag

There's a "speed metal" (whatever that means) band that plays songs about science fiction writers. It's called BloodHag, but of course that should have some umlauts randomly sprinkled in it. This review from the Seattle Times says, of their name, "Think about it." I have thought about it, and if there's a hidden meaning there, it's escaping me.

Their song list contains songs about most of your A-list science fiction authors. You can hear some of them, but not the one on Lovecraft, which I hope they took special care with. Nor can you hear the Henry Kuttner/C.L. Moore. I'm sure that's a love song.

Songs I'd like to hear:

Edmond Hamilton
H. Beam Piper
James H. Schmitz
Emil Petaja
Doris Piserchia

The Seattle Times review says that they throw books into the crowd during their act. Man. Where were they when I was young?

I got a pop-up Javascript from BloodHag's site that says: WARNING: May induce literacy. I guess that's clever if you're a teenager.

I have just finished reading Fred Hoyle's The Black Cloud, and feel like making my own song about it:

Fred Hoyle
You are a boil
On the cheek of science fiction
Your scenes are talky
Your characters chalky,
Linear in depiction

In this excretion
You neglect accretion
Rendering your cloud a disk
It's terribly convenient
But I won't be lenient
I'm on you like flies on Fisk

(That's got a kind Carmina Burana thing going, doesn't it?)

Yeah, OK, it needs work. But I might not be getting any scientific work if anyone sees this, so I'll have lots of time.

Link via Gary Farber, who mercifully does not fill us in on his adventures as Joanna Russ's houseboy.

I swear, there's a joke in there just screaming to get out.