"Paul Levinson's It's Real Life is a page-turning exploration into that multiverse known as rock and roll. But it is much more than a marvelous adventure narrated by a master storyteller...it is also an exquisite meditation on the very nature of alternate history." -- Jack Dann, The Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Science Fiction and Music: A Personal Account

Science fiction and music have been two of my passions every since I was kid in the 1950s, when stories about space and time travel, and rock 'n' roll, were in their first, separate golden ages.   But, for me, they were intertwined.  I'd hear Roy Orbison's "Only the the Lonely" playing on someone's transistor radio as I walked to the Allerton Avenue branch of the New York Public Library to nab a copy of Isaac Asimov's The End of Eternity.   I loved them - still love them - both.   The music and the stories somehow both speak to unlimited, soaring possibilities.

In the years that followed, I've written a lot of science fiction, and a lot of songs.  But rarely have the two been interconnected.  Last year, though, I wrote a the lyrics to "If I Traveled to the Past," a time travel love song, for which John Anealio wrote the music and recorded this demo.



And, also last year, I wrote a story that I had come with just the title of nearly 20 years ago:  "Sam's Requests".   It's like nothing else I've ever written - a story about a battle in deep space in the distant future, connected to music here on Earth in the early 1960s.    The 15-year old in me and my present self were  delighted when Buzzy Mag accepted it for publication, where you can read it, here, any time, for free.  You've heard of space opera?  I think of "Sam's Requests" as space rock 'n' roll.

Enjoy ... and I think I'm going to listen to David Bowie's "Space Oddity" now.


No comments:

InfiniteRegress.tv