More (electronic) music research

Electronic music CDs

A couple of years ago I had fun researching my book on The Science of Sci-Fi Music. Now I’m working on another music-related writing project – and having yet more fun in the process. This one isn’t solely about electronic music, but that’s a large part of it, as you can see from the research material illustrated above. Most of the items depicted are obviously electronic music, but in a few cases the connection is more subtle. For example, the Xenakis CD consists purely of string quartets, although the first (and most famous) of them was composed with the aid of a computer – all the way back in 1962. Five years later, the Doors Strange Days album featured one of the first uses of a synthesizer in rock music. And the last three items in the bottom row, while not obviously “electronic music”, use so much technology in their production that they would have been inconceivable without it.

Incidentally, I don’t care that CDs have plummeted out of fashion with everyone else – I still enjoy having a physical trophy that I can put on a shelf (it’s the same with books and DVDs – my house is full of them). For info, the CDs illustrated here (about 4% of my entire collection) are: Edgard Varese Complete Works, Iannis Xenakis String Quartets, Karlheinz Stockhausen Kontakte, Milton Babbitt Philomel, The Doors Strange Days, Kraftwerk Autobahn, Isao Tomita Snowflakes Are Dancing, Brian Eno Discreet Music, The Art of Noise Who’s Afraid Of…, Pet Shop Boys Behaviour, The Prodigy Experience, William Orbit Pieces in a Modern Style, Bjork Homogenic, Kanye West My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Jacob Collier Djesse volume 3, Grimes Miss Anthropocene.

Science + Fiction + Music

Sci-fi music books

I’ve just started writing my 4th book in Springer’s Science and Fiction series, following Pseudoscience and Science Fiction (2017), Rockets and Ray Guns (2018) and Fake Physics (2019). Like those books, this one focuses on the three-way overlap between science, science fiction and some other subject – which in this case is music.

There are plenty of books about sci-fi music – particularly film scores, or songs with SF-inspired lyrics – and the “science” of music in the sense of acoustics and the physics of sound waves. I’m not trying to compete with books like that. As I said, I’m more interested in three-way overlaps, which narrows the field considerably. The picture above shows some of the research material I’ve been consulting!

Researching Life on Other Worlds

Astrobiology books

My next book, due to be published in September, is on the subject of Astrobiology. It’s my third contribution to the Hot Science series from Icon Books, after Destination Mars (July 2017) and Cosmic Impact (Feb 2019).

For most of my previous books, while I’ve been writing them I’ve done a blog post showing some of the research material I’ve been using. I forgot to do that for this one, so I’ll do it now the book is on its way to the printers.

Actually only 8 of the 9 books pictured above actually qualify as “research”. The one in the middle of the top row – Life on Other Worlds by Sir Harold Spencer Jones – is something I only acquired a couple of days ago –for 50 pence from a flea market. It was originally written in 1940, which must make it one of the earliest books ever written on the subject. My copy is a second edition from 1952 – but that’s still prehistory as far as astrobiology is concerned.

Interestingly, most of the books pictured are ones that I’ve reviewed. The four books on the bottom row, and the one at the right-hand end of the top row, are review copies that Fortean Times sent me. My favourite of them, and the most unusual, is The Great Silence – which I also reviewed on Brian Clegg’s Popular Science blog. The two books with “Aliens” in the title are remaindered copies I got from The Works – and found interesting enough to review on Brian’s site. So the only thing I actually bought as research for my own book is What Does a Martian Look Like? – a rather scruffy copy I found on eBay.

Another Book in Progress

Science and fiction books

I’m part way through writing my third contribution to the Springer “Science and Fiction” series, after Pseudoscience and Science Fiction last year, and Rockets and Ray Guns a few months ago.

As I’ve done in the past, I thought I’d share a photograph of some of the books I’ve been using as “research material” – one of the most enjoyable things about writing for this series! Unlike the previous two books, the unifying theme of this one has more to do with style than subject-matter, so it may not be obvious from the photo. So you’ll have to wait until Springer formally announce the new book – hopefully some time in the first half of next year.

Next book research

Asteroids, comets and impactsThese days I always seem to be working on a lot of things at once, so “next book” has multiple meanings. There’s the next one to be published, which I finished writing several months ago and is now making its way through the publisher’s production process. There’s the one I’ve been asked to write and given a title for, but I’ve barely started to think about it yet. And then there’s the one I’m actually writing at the moment. That’s the one I’m talking about here. There’s a clue to its subject matter in the research material pictured above!

Cold War Update

Cold War Sci-Fi ScienceI just realized that it’s been four months since I last posted an update on this blog. I’ve been too busy! Anyway, my Cold War book now has a working title – Rockets and Ray Guns: The Sci-Fi Science of the Cold War. I’m about two-thirds of the way through writing it – hopefully it should be out some time around the middle of 2018.

Basically the book is a follow-on to Pseudoscience and Science Fiction, which was published last year. While the first book looked at the way SF anticipated and cross-fertilized with various well-known tropes of the pseudoscience industry, the new one will do the same for the real (or in some cases, allegedly “real”) science of the Cold War.

The picture above gives a quick taster of the kind of thing I mean. The illustration on the left comes from a short story by John W. Campbell called “When the Atoms Failed”, from the January 1930 issue of Amazing Stories. The picture on the right is an artist’s conception of a space-based electromagnetic railgun, dating from July 1984. This was a real-world proposal for an anti-ballistic–missile defence system, using technology that had already been demonstrated in the laboratory.

Cold War research

Cold War books

Having thoroughly enjoyed doing the research for my book on Pseudoscience and Science Fiction last year (see a selection of research materials here and here), and then The Telescopic Tourist’s Guide to the Moon earlier this year (see my Lunar Research blog post) I’ve been wondering what to do next. One idea that occurred to me is something about the Cold War … so I’ve been dutifully immersing myself in research on the subject, as you can see from the picture above.

Lunar Research

Moon books and films
About a year ago I did a couple of posts on my old blog (here and here) showing some of the books and DVDs I had the pleasure of “researching” for my Pseudoscience and Science Fiction book. Now I’m working on the follow-up. It’s not really a sequel, except that it’s for the same publisher and involves a similar mix of science fiction and real science (though no pseudoscience this time).

The general subject will be easy enough to guess from the “research” materials pictured above. My book is going to have a Unique Selling Point … but I don’t want to divulge that until its finished!