SFE3
By Adam Roberts | October 15, 2011
Categories: Book News
Very exciting: the long-awaited, much-expanded 3rd edition of the genre's standard reference work, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (edited John Clute, Peter Nicholls and David Langford) has at last gone live -- or at least, its Beta edition has (you can find out what the 'beta edition' is, here). I've made some miniscule contribution to this by writing a few entries on SF Music; but really this staggering, amazing achievement belongs to Peter, John and David, not to mention the estimable Graham Sleight. I'm more delighted for them than I can easily say; and I'm very honoured to be associated with the project, even in a marginal sense.
Since going live, there's been a good quantity of feedback from fans and readers, which is an excellent thing. I'm very happy to take corrections where my music entries are concerned, of course; either here or through the site's own contact page (or via Graham's SFE3 blog). It's also good to get suggestions of SF music I've not yet got to: I'm very grateful, for instance, to Jez Winship and Neil Snowdon, whose long, thoughtful response to the release of the SFE3-beta contains a wealth of suggestions for more music entries. I'm writing some of these now, as it happens.
No tags for this post.
October 15th, 2011 at 9:06 pm
[...] Adam Roberts, I’ve just discovered Jez Winship’s long response to the SFE launch. Since it’s [...]
November 13th, 2011 at 10:08 pm
Some hip-hop ones for you if you're interested:
Del the Funky Homosapien as "Deltron 3030" -
http://allmusic.com/artist/deltron-3030-p431169
"Deltron 3030's self-titled album and single sends the hip-hop triumvirate into the year 3030, where -- as the sole survivors of earth -- they travel through the galaxy."
Kool Keith has done several sci-fi themed albums -
http://allmusic.com/album/dr-o.....693/review
"Keith's crazed alter ego. Dr. Octagon is an incompetent, time-traveling, possibly extraterrestrial surgeon"
http://allmusic.com/album/blac.....836/review
"killing off his Dr. Octagon alias and resurrecting himself as an intergalactic Little Richard named Black Elvis"
Gift of Gab of Blackalicious has a couple of sci-fi themed albums -
"4th Dimension Rocketships Going Up" and "Escape 2 Mars
Also Afrika Bambaataa and Digital Underground have very big Kraftwerk and Funkadelic influences respectively, so a lot of the same sci-fi elements carried over.
Digital Underground's "Sex Packets" album had a good sci-fi theme:
"a concept album about "G.S.R.A." (Genetic Suppression Relief Antedotes), a pharmaceutical substance that is produced in the form of a large glowing pill (about the size of a quarter), that comes in a condom-sized package, and is allegedly developed by the government to provide its intended users (Astronauts and the like) with a satisfying sexual experience in situations where the quest-for/attainment-of such experiences would be counterproductive to the mission at hand."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_Packets
Also, there is a looooad of sci-fi themed music in the hip-hop subgenre "nerdcore"-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerdcore
November 13th, 2011 at 11:39 pm
Thanks, Paul! That's extremely useful -- I'll search those out and write up some entries. I know much less about hip hop than I ought.