Ruminations - May 22, 2008
by Stephanie Sollow




While this is news that very likely, and perhaps rightly, will pass unnoticed and unremarked upon, and quite admittedly is a mere blip as news items go ... my tenure with Progression Magazine has come to an end. I remark upon this only because it means that you will again find, from time to time, my musings here in Ruminations. I enjoyed my time with the magazine and my quarterly chats with you out there - you few, you brave few. (My few readers, not overall subscribers, naturally).

I had embarked on what would been my next article for some future issue of the 'zine, and will share with you here what I was going to write about. However, as a prelude... it so happens that as I was formulating this column in the cold of fall (well, as cold a fall as SoCal gets), there appeared in the Oct/Nov issue of Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine a reprint of his famous tale "Nightfall"... all part of that magazine's 30th Anniversary; although, I only just read the tale on the flight back from RoSFest 2008.

Here then is what I was going to write about (enhanced with pics) - and no, it was neither finished nor edited. Send your complaints to our complaints department... which would be me as well, by the way.

It seems like a very long time since we visited like this. How are the kids / wife / parents / significant other(s)? Fine, I hope, and feeling in a reasonably enough good mood to let you sit alone with this magazine. Another bumper issue, isn't it?

On this page, however, I wanted to talk about something that has been brewing in the back of my mind for ages, waiting for the right time to be set free. That right time was May of 2007, though we're a long way away from then now, aren't we? And that's because it's taken me even longer to write this. See, back in 2003, Rowen Poole of the excellent progressive rock/metal band Persephone's Dream permitted me to hear some demos of what became their album Pyre Of Dreams. Although it was not on that demo, Poole mentioned to me that they also would be including a song called "Nightfall," based on the short story by noted science fiction (and science fact) author Isaac Asimov. That short story was later expanded into a novel, co-authored by Robert Silverberg, another noted science fiction author. Well ... this got me thinking, because I had also noticed that the prog rock band Dreadnaught had a song entitled "R. Daneel Olivaw" on their Musica En Flagrante album from 2004. R. Daneel Olivaw is a character - a robot - in many of Asimov's works in the Robot/Foundation series.

What my thought was - how many other Asimov references are there in progressive music? We know there are a plethora of artists influenced by the Lord of the Rings and other J.R.R. Tolkien tales; we know that King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table have been an influence... but what about Asimov? Well, there ought to be a lot, since he has written some 400-plus books and maybe as many, if not more, short stories and articles, on a wide range of subjects. Plus he put his name to a monthly magazine that still publishes today, despite Asimov's passing in 1992. As I write this, the magazine is closing out its 30th Anniversary. But, whew boy, that's a lot, A LOT, of material to sift through and cross-reference. So, I'll just touch briefly on two of his famous works - I, Robot and the Foundation Series of novels (Foundation, Foundation And Empire, Second Foundation, Foundations Edge, Prelude To Foundation, Forward The Foundation, and Foundation And Earth).

Alright then, where might we find references? Well, there's Seldon's Inquisitor, a band that don't seem to be around anymore, but did release an album, their third, entitled Why Not? via M & M Music. The name is a reference to the character of Hari Seldon, a prominent and significant character (to be oblique) and noted psychohistorian in the Foundation Series. It is, perhaps, a reference to Seldon's having come before Emperor Cleon I to discuss his (Seldon's) theories.

Then there's Trantor, the "main" planet in the Galactic Empire in the Foundation Series, which you will find referenced in Erik Norlander's "Trantor Station" on his Threshold and Threshold Remastered CDs; in fact, on the latter is also a Quicktime video of Norlander performing this track live at ProgWest 2001. And on the Remastered edition, there's a previously unreleased bonus track called "Return To The Ruins Of Trantor." You'll find this album holds a many more references, to boot, including the "Critical Mass" suite of "i. Leviathan - ii. Anthem - iii. Republic - iv. Foundation - v. Leviathan Reprise."

There's a reference in a Hawkwind track "Robot," which Jim Garten at ProgArchives refers to in his review of P.X.R. 5 as a parody of the infamous 3 Laws of Robotics. And in digging, I find at the (perhaps reliable, perhaps not) Wikipedia a suggestion that a line in Yes' "And You And I" makes reference to the Foundation Series in the lyric "As the Foundation left to create the spiral arm?"

One reference you might think was true, but isn't, is Alan Parsons Project's I Robot. Although the band hoped to base the album on the story, permission rights had been granted elsewhere at the time and they could not. Though certainly there can be said to be some influence, if not directly referenced.

So... what I had expected and hoped would be an easily captured bounty of references turns out not to be quite so; or at least not quite so obvious. Unlike Tolkien, there aren't yet thousands of bands named after Asimov characters.

Some possible references, however: David Bedford's Star's End, [and that's as far as I got with that].

I do need to mention that I did a little research on this and need to reveal those sources - ProgArchives, Wikipedia, [...]

So then, there's the rough draft. If nothing else, it gives you a starting point for your own explorations. As mentioned, I'll post thoughts here again... in a manner that is somewhere between full-on editorial and blog. And to facilitate two-way communication - or for you to file your complaint that this was not a polished "editorial" - I've turned on comments.

By the way, although it was set up because I couldn't view a certain artists' pics without creating an account, ProgressiveWorld.net also has a MySpace site - www.myspace.com/progressiveworldnet. You can drop by and say hi, but the main "action" will happen here.


Links: Progression Magazine, Persephone's Dream, Dreadnaught, M and M Music, Erik Norlander, ProgArchives








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Published on: 2008-05-07 (2239 reads)

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