My favorite album of this summer is Under the Cover Vol. 2 by Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs (yes, of the Bangles fame) . So pop, refreshing, and cute. They cover tastefully nearly-forgotten smash hits of the 70s and 80s. And I have to think about the other cover songs of our media: fiction.
Yes, there’re a lot of stories and novels that are inspired by music. Howard Waldrop, George R. R. Martin, Gardner Dozois, and even James Tiptree, Jr. used to write such homage to music. And there are a lot of anthologies of stories that are inspired by particular musicians, such as Bruce Springsteen, Sonic Youth, the Fall, and Janice Ian. But although there’re occasional amusing pieces, I haven’t read an anthology entirely satisfying as a book. Are we no good in interpreting music into fiction?
Well, no, anthologies are not like cover albums, more like compilations. Ah, that must be the case. I’ve also never liked compilation albums, except handful songs in them. So why has any writer never tried a single author’s collection of music-inspired stories? I bet all the above-mentioned writers can. Music and fiction are so alienated?
Still, on the other hand, we have a lot of anthologies of stories which are inspired by other stories. Like this year’s Poe’s, or Jack Vance’s. They seem to be good, although again I find the stories are good, I don’t think I can sincerely say I like an entire anthology in this tradition as a book. They’re not copies (I mean duplicated copies) in the sense of cover songs, but too aspiring to be original. They are not pop enough, and never cute. And in those cases of Poe and Vance, they cover stories of classic, not those of the 70s and 80s, not ones of our youth. They’re more like Rod Stewart or Boz Scaggs covering standard pops, or Eric Clapton’s Robert Johnson tribute. They don’t have the same effect and loveliness. Why don’t writers write pastiche of the works of their influential peers or immediate antecessors? I remember a lot of young writers wrote good homage to Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury and J. G. Ballard in the 70s. John Varley, Ed Bryant, Alexei Panshin, Tom Reamy, and many more! They were pop and cute! So why don’t I see any good fictional covers of Bill Gibson, Greg Benford, Lucius Shepard or Harlan Ellison by younger authors?
Yes, I know Ben Rosenbaum has written a chapbook of Calvino/Borges/Bradbury pastiche. Yes, it was pop and cute, but is it a sole exception? Is the current steampunk revival like that? Do they write the stories of their youths, reviving James Blaylock, or Tim Powers? No, I don’t think so.
Also I do know we have a bunch of good fictional homage to comics and movies. Even writers of mainstream literature and mystery as well as horror write that kind of works. Although they are pop, cute, and sometimes tasteful enough, I don’t think they’re refreshing rendition of their originals. Am I demanding too much?
SF is known to be good at sharing. Shared-world Universe stories and collaboration are popular. And we do adapt other people’s ideas into our own works, even if they’re fictitious. So there should be no problem in covering the favorite works of our youths, but I don’t find any equivalent of cover songs in our fiction.
Oh I’d really like to see either tasteful retelling of the stories of my youth, or good interpretation of songs of my youth into fiction. But maybe that should be our jobs as translators, pop, refreshing, and cute rendition of original foreign language fiction into our own language, vice versa.
