Filk U! The wonderful world of geek music!

"Hey, Glork! Haven't seen you since ComiCon 1998! Love the new ears.  You make them yourself?"

"Gee, Doff, thanks for noticing! HISlah, I did make them myself. Heghlu'meH QaQ jajvam!"  

"JIjah....I mean..." Glork begins to back away slowly.

"I'm just teasing you!" Doff claps Glork on the back jovially.  "Where are you off to next? Maybe I'll grab the wife and meet you there!"

Quizzically:  "Nugjatlh?"

"The...wife...spouse..."

"Oh...Well, I am going to see the folk music in Room 222."

"Folk music?" A rather rumpled program is retrieved from the waistband of rather snug uniform pants.  "I wondered if this was a typo.  It says 'Filk music...'"

Superior, snorting laughter.  "Indeed it does.  And yes, it is a typographical error.  But it sounds rather catchy, don't you think?"

***
Yes, those were actual words in the language of Klingon. No, I did not make them up.  Yes, you may now kiss my toes.

And that was a dramatized rendition of how the word "filk" came to mean sci-fi/fantasy-based folk music.  A typo in a convention program that was to define a genre and give meaning to many a wandering folk artist with an affinity for the weird.  Filk songs can be about anything near to the hearts of sci-fi fans: vampires, kitty cats, computer, dragons, Star Trek, Lovecraft, comics, etc.  If you happen to be a seasoned filker (someone who is a filk singer/songwriter) you may win a Pegasus Award at the Ohio Valley Filk Fest!

I invite you to plumb the depths of my favorite filk tunes.  So, grab your snake and your plumb bob and enjoy!

Oh, and Hab SoSlI' Quch! (But don't tell her I said so...)

1.  My ultimate favorite filk song does not have a Youtube entry, but you sometimes can find a version to listen to here.  Scroll to the bottom of the page for the lyrics. And all you New-Who fans can bask in the glory of the original Doctor! Cecilia Eng's Grandfather Clock.
It is a Dr. Who-based song using the tune of the old folk song My Grandfather's Clock.  This song defines filk in my humble opinion (see there, that's a good geek phrasing, eh?).

2.  As I am told by my own filk-sensei, Michael of the great frozen north, this next one is the most well-known filk song ever in the history of filkology.  The song won Leslie Fish (hmmm, suspiciously Lovecraftian name..) one of those much coveted Pegasus Awards in 2003. She, however, has stated that she wrote the song as a filler for an album and has regretted it ever since.  That's gratitude for ya! Here are her lyrics, and mind you, there are around a bizillion different versions, but I bring you the original! And for you visual types, the Star Trek version of the video!


3. You may skip the video on this one and just listen.  It is only a picture of Elrond superimposed against the Matrix code, and if you need that explained to you, you've come to the wrong place. Heather  Alexander: Freaking the Mundanes.  That tune is, of course, Waltzing Mathilda.


4.  And my personal favorite.  Also because no horror, filk, or ocean themed blog should be without it, The HP Lovecraft Historical Society's heartwarming, seasonal favorite, "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Fishmen."  *Sniffle* May the joy of Dagon be with you this, and every season.



Now that you are armed with the Dr. Scott Refresher Course version of sci-fi music, I bid you to go forth upon the earth and filk!
****
Lyrics: Cecilia Eng-The Grandfather Clock
 Oh, a grandfather clock just appeared in the hall
and it seems very strange to be sure
And a man has come out of the clock in the hall
and is stating some things quite obscure
He seems mildly deranged and a little bit insane
we can make out his words if we try
He says he's the master and we'll obey,
or we all shall die.
So we did as he said after one of us was dead
shrunken down to a tiny toy doll
And we wake up in fright to hear laughter at night
from the man in the clock in the hall
Oh we don't understand all the orders and commands
why he wants to be king in the sky
But he is the master and we'll obey,
or we all shall die
Now a wooden blue box has appeared in the hall
just across from the grandfather clock
And a man has come out of the box in the hall
and his clothes are a bit of a shock
He seems mildly deranged and a little bit insane
and he holds out a featherless hand
He says he's The Doctor and how are we
as he shakes my hand
Now the man in the clock has stepped into the hall
and is holding The Doctor by force
And they talk as we work, like old friends now estranged
as the project continues on course
They seem mildly deranged and a little bit insane
as they talk of strange worlds in the sky
but the master orders and we obey
or we all shall die
Now a darkness and cold has come into our hall
it seems things have gone terribly sour
for the man from the box and the man from the clock
are both trying to cut off the power
as the darkness creeps out they work hard to shut it out
all their differences now laid aside
how we wish they and their darkness would go away
as we try to hide
At the end of the fight day has won over night
and the master has run to his clock
and the man from the box gives a curse as it fades
and his hand passes right through the lock
He seems mildly deranged and a little bit insane
as he screams at the star studded sky
but he is The Doctor and we'll obey
or we all shall die
But he says we are free and returns to his box
and it fades from our now empty hall
And we sigh with relief and a bit of disbelief
as the last weeks events we recall
And we've put the word out sent our messengers about
no more grandfather clock chimes will ring
they've been chopped up never to run again
o'er a time Lord bring

Lovecraft and Dick

I was reading science fiction when I was too young to know it was science fiction.  Recently, however, something has rekindled my love of the genre and I've been going back through stuff I should have read years ago and somehow missed.  Two works of short science fiction I devoured recently are reviewed here, by two of my favorite genre authors, Lovecraft and Dick.  I chose these two particular works because I feel they are some of the most poignant, most imaginative, and the most accessible of each authors' works to people who are not familiar with science fiction or who have not read these authors before.  Even non-genre fans will enjoy.

Title:  A Colour Out of Space
Author:  H.P. Lovecraft
Pages: approx. 35
Publication Date:  1927

One sentence synopsis:  An unwitting surveyor preparing to turn an old settlement into a reservoir stumbles across a mystery from half a century previous involving a strange and brilliant rock that fell from the heavens.

The Colour Out of Space is a perfect blend of horror and science fiction.  It also tells of the most alien creature ever to appear in literature or film.  Many alien stories and movies depict aliens that are either humanoid in some form, have thoughts and motives that we can relate to on some level, and behave in ways that, while we may not be able to sympathize, we can at least logically understand.  The creature in The Colour Out of Space has no form that can be described using human adjectives.  Its motivations are as foriegn as its appearance.  Its powers we can see the effects of, but we cannot fathom exactly what it is doing.  How, you ask, can a writer craft a story if his creation cannot be captured in words? Read this story.  NOW!

The Colour Out of Space lays to paper some of the most beautiful phrases and emotions I've ever read.  That's coming from an obsessive logophile. What should have taken me an hour to read took probably three hours because I had to keep going back to savor the heartbreaking loveliness of a particular passage, to consume a line of dialogue.  This story does for science fiction what Hamlet did for drama.

The story:  Told through first and second hand accounts of a past event, the tale unfolds to a man who starts out as a skeptic.  A meteroite crashes on a farm and is taken to a lab for examination with bizarre results.  Finally, it fades away, leaving something behind that begins to slowly taint the entire landscape, causing devastation to the farm and the family living on what is called by locals "the blasted heath."  Read it for that description alone:  "the blasted heath." 

News:  While waiting impatiently for del Toro's At the Mountains of Madness, Lovecraft fans can try to get their hands on a copy of the DVD or Bluray of Germany's Die Farbe, an indie release of an adaptation of A Colour Out of Space that has been getting better reviews than most Lovecraft adaptations.

3.99 for all Lovecraft in one bundle on kindle.  That is the best way to go if you're just wanting to dabble in his material.  Some of it can be quite daunting, however Colour Out of Space is the perfect starting point.

Title:  Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Author:  Philip K. Dick
Pages:  approx. 135
Publication Date:  1968

One Sentence Synopsis:  In a partially deserted earth-future of fallout dust and aptitude tests, renegade androids who have killed their masters and fled to earth to try to make a life for themselves are hunted by bounty hunters for 1,000 dollars a piece, money that can buy the much-coveted living animal pet.

The movie blade runner, while based on this book, has flip-all to do with it beyond some surface scrapings.  I was a fan of Blade Runner as a teenager, but I hadn't read a lot of Dick at the time. 

Pervading themes throughout the book are loneliness, empathy, identity, and destiny.  All of these are things that slap us into reality as we move from birth to death.  But in a world where only the genetically unaltered from fallout dust can immigrate to other planets and procreate, where android slaves are used as incintive to do so, and where animals from spiders to elephants are all but extinct and coveted as signs of wealth and humanity, loneliness and destiny begin to define life.

The Story:  Bounty hunter  Rick Deckard, in the middle of a stressful time in his marriage, dons his fallout-proof codpiece and hits the hovercar-highway to hunt down renegade android murderers so he can buy a real animal to replace the electric sheep he has grazing on his rooftop garden.  The importance of the animals invades all aspect of life on earth.  Without public displays of affection toward helpless creatures, one can be suspected of being an android.  Affection toward raising and keeping animals has become a measure to define humanity.  Androids do not feel empathy or care to have animals.  At least that is the general consensus.

Rick's been looking for a big break and he might have found it when a group of android hellions murdered their slavemasters on the Mars colony and fled to earth to rape and pillage.  But what Rick finds on his 24 hour journey to bring them to justice (i.e. retire them, i.e. kill them) will challenge the very fabric of his humanity.  Through encounters in his day-long task, Rick finds questions about what makes someone human, worthy of life and respect, and what weight should be put upon intelligence, organs, and acts of despiration.  Questions to which there are no answers.

Another important theme:  Religion is as central to human life on this future-earth as pet ownership.  Mercerism is the religion of the day.  Only humans are allowed to participate in Mercerism because it centers on empathy for all actual living things and a desire for human companionship.  Because the earth is so sparsely populated after the last World War, from death and immigration, many people live their lives without much human contact.  Mercerism connects them to other human beings.  Through Mercerism, Dick explores what makes people human, what draws people to each other, and what a person (or Android) becomes when left out of the circle of humanity.

In so few pages, Dick tells a story so vast and important that it should be required reading.

Shadow out of Time (1935)

Author:  H.P. Lovecraft
Year:  1935
Pages:  135

I associate the Shadow Out of Time novella with Lovecraft's personality more than any of his other works I've read.  Lovecraft said in interviews that he felt disconnected from his time period, that he longed to wake suddenly in the sanity of ages past.  To think of his notion that ages before his own were more sane than his is a strange paradox considering that in his stories, to know a distant age brings insanity.  Lovecraft was also reportedly so lacking confidence that he refused to type up a manuscript of the story.  The young fan of Lovecraft's who typed his manuscript for him made mistakes because of Lovecraft's illegible handwriting.  When the original manuscript was found in 1995, a corrected version of the story was published.  However, from what I understand, the corrected version has an introduction that contains slight spoilers to the ending, and ending which, without a doubt, is one of Lovecraft's best.


In the Shadow Out of Time, Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee (early 1900s), a professor of political economics at Miskatonic U., is stricken unconscious for sixteen hours.  Upon awakening, Peaslee's friends and loved ones fail to recognize anything of the famililar in the man.  His habits, mannerisms, and patterns of speech have changed.  For years he continues in a strange life change before suddenly coming back into himself, whereupon he begins to explore what could have happened to cause the changes that lost him his family.

What he discovers begins to send him into madness.  Traveling the world with his son and collegues, Peaslee discovers the Great Race, the Yithians, who can project their minds across space and time, holding the minds of the bodies they temporarily inhabit hostage. 

To call Shadow  a novella diminshes its impact as a valid and necessary work of horror/science fiction.  While short in pages, Shadow fills each line with more substance than most longer novels.  Shadow also holds many parallels to Lovecraft's life including a five year period when his own father exhibited a sort of madness and personality change.  Detailed and hideous descriptions of creatures and beings from our world and others fill the pages as Peaslee begins to make contact with his past.  Lovecraft also gives a nod to his long-time friend, Conan the Barbarian creator Robert E. Howard, in the character encountered by Peaslee called Crom-Ya.  Many Lovecraftean creatures and characters are mentioned in passing through Peaslee's exploration inside his own primordial memories.

Shadow Out of Time is not a good starting place for Lovecraft beginners.  There is no direct dialogue in the text.  The discriptions may seem archaic or weighty for novices in Lovecraftean lore.  This is also one of Lovecraft's longer works and a beginner might do better to start out slower.  Otherwise, the story is brilliant and engaging.  The story's high point, for me, was the vivid description of the ancient ruins of the Yith, given in graphic detail as Peaslee rediscovers them in his own time.  This is definitely in my top 10 of science fiction stories!