The Sound of Things to Come: An Audible History of the Science Fiction Film

488 Pages·2018·2.826 MB·English

by  Trace Reddell

THE SOUND OF THINGS TO COME
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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.
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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)
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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
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• 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