The Sound of Things to Come: An Audible History of the Science Fiction Film PDF
Preview The Sound of Things to Come: An Audible History of the Science Fiction Film
THE SOUND OF THINGS TO COME This page intentionally left blank THE SOUND OF THINGS TO COME AN AUDIBLE HISTORY OF THE SCIENCE FICTION FILM • TRACE REDDELL • University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis London The University of Minnesota Press gratefully acknowledges financial support for the publication of this book from the Emergent Digital Practices program, the Department of Media, Film, and Journalism Studies, and the division of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at the University of Denver. Readers will find playlists, podcasts, and other Sonic Science Fiction material at https://sonicsciencefiction.com. Material on the Vortex Concerts originally appeared in “Cyborg Ritual and Sentic Technology in the Vortex Concerts,” Sonic Acts XIII— The Poetics of Space: Spatial Explorations in Art, Science, Music, and Technology, edited by Arie Altena and Sonic Acts (Amsterdam: Sonic Acts Press, Paradiso, 2010). Copyright 2018 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401- 2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu Printed in Canada on acid- free paper The University of Minnesota is an equal- opportunity educator and employer. 22 21 20 19 18 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Reddell, Trace, author. Title: The sound of things to come : an audible history of the science fiction film / Trace Reddell. Description: Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2018]. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2018001587 (print) | ISBN 978-0-8166-8312-3 (hc) | ISBN 978-0-8166-8313-0 (pb) Subjects: LCSH: Science fiction films–History and criticism. | Sound in motion pictures. Classification: LCC PN1995.9.S26 R435 2018 (print)| DDC 791.43/615–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018001587 I hear a new world. Calling me . . . calling me . . . calling me. So strange and so real, Haunting me . . . haunting me . . . haunting me. — Joe Meek and the Blue Men “I Hear a New World” (1959) This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Introduction • New Sounds in Science Fiction • 1 1 • The Origins of Sonic Science Fiction (1924–5 0) • 43 2 • Ambient Novum, Alien Novum (1950– 59) • 91 3 • Cosmos Philosophy and Thought Synthesizers (1959–6 8) • 191 4 • Sonic Alienation and Psytech at War (1971–7 7) • 285 5 • Sonorous Object- Oriented Ontologies (1979– 89) • 361 Acknowledgments • 435 Bibliography • 437 Index • 455 This page intentionally left blank • INTRODUCTION • New Sounds in Science Fiction M ysterious and otherworldly! A tune from another world! The electri- cal music instrument of the future! In the final years of the 1920s, the sounds of Léon Theremin’s new electronic instrument, the etherphone, prompted journalists and music critics to evoke the spacey and futuristic vocabulary of a sonic science fiction.1 The device certainly looked futuristic. Its only visible controllers consisted of two antennae mounted on a wooden cabinet, which housed the electric components. The proximity of the performer’s hands to the antennae on the right de- termined pitch, the one on the left amplitude. While lowering the hand toward the volume control could dampen shifts between notes for more discrete changes of pitch, the etherphone favored vibrato and sirenlike oscillations between tones rather than exact movements. The essence of its ethereal nature, the gliding electric sound set the etherphone apart from acoustic instruments even as it suggested a violin in the higher oc- taves, hinted at a cello in the lower, and could eerily mimic a trembling soprano voice. But never precisely. It was this fundamental difference of tonality, the wavering of electric current, that prompted early reviewers to stretch their vocabulary beyond the limits of the Earth, in flights of purple prose, as they sought to convey the instrument’s unique sound on the page of newspapers and periodicals. In “Wave of a Hand Draws Music from the Air” (1928), Lawrence Gilman evokes the “mysterious • 1
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