Concept Sci-Fi Short Story Competition

[adelaidesean]

Concept Sci-fi is hosting its first annual Short Story Competition, offering entrants a chance to win £100 plus some signed goodies from competition judge, um, me.

Details in the link above. It's a themed competition. Here's the blurb:

Frank Zappa once said that everything in the universe is part of one great big note. He wasn't far wrong. There's music in the earth's core, in the sun's atmosphere, even in the roiling fire of the Big Bang. There's music in our interior lives too, in the stories we tell. "Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable", according to Leonard Bernstein, which makes it a perfect tool in the writing of space opera--my true but not my only love.

Way back in the late 1980s, I had to choose between two lives: one writing words and another writing notes. In an alternate universe, there's a version of me beavering away at a new symphony, or the score to a Hollywood movie. Here, the closest I get is putting Gary Numan lyrics in the mouths of my characters, and dreaming.

Dream for me. Tell me the note that ripples through spacetime in the wake of an ftl cruiser. Convey to me the songs that alien cephalopods whistle in their jovian soup. Give me the music of the spheres as you hear it. When the echoes fade, we'll all be richer for it.

Comments

[derekcfpegritz.livejournal.com]

Have you ever heard Forma Tadre's The Music of Erich Zann? If not, google it--I'm sure you'll be able to find a copy someplace. I believe it may still be available from the iTunes Music Store, but I'd never suggest ANYone purchase anything from there.

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the tip. Just came out on iTunes but hasn't appeared on eMusic. Will track it down somehow.

I love that his name, according the Great Wiki, is "a sort of portmanteau from TAngerine DREam's album FORce MAjeure".

[derekcfpegritz.livejournal.com]

I know! Never would've guessed that on my own, but it's bitchin' as hell. THe influence is clearly shown in his second album Automate, which is a good album in its own right, but having come right after his Lovecraftian monsterpiece Navigator (which forms the audio basis of my "Der Musik von Erich Zann"), it sounds...weird. Check out Automate first, and then Navigator.

Automate = supercooled helium chillout noises.
Navigator = soundtrack to "The Call of Cthulhu".