"Despite the shabby looks of the man, all that -- the folk harp, the bird, the cloak -- could only mean one thing: a College-trained. And not just any College-trained, but a poet."
Silenced Songs. Aliette de Bodard
#
"Her clothes were odd, mismatched, as though stolen from a washing line. Her hands were hidden within her sleeves. Her skirt could have wrapped around her twice. Her stance was skinny, her face was full. You could see the life there as though it had only just been invented."
Blue Sky World. Andrew Hook
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"They'd all played this venue. Elvis Costello played here when he was still called Declan MacManus. The Stranglers were here when they hadn't strangled anyone, and 'wake up and make love to me' was only a line on the lips of some seventeen-year-old chancer with a pissed girl in tow upstairs. "
Cow Lane. Chris Amies
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"They say only police and psychopaths are out and about at 4.00 am. Thought Commissars and Surrealists. Old Man Truncheon and the Smiler with the Knife. So which were we?"
The Three Lilies. Cyril Simsa
#
"It was, of course, a perfect day. For over a millennium now, every day had been perfect. "
Blue Note Heaven. David H. Hendrickson
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“Oh aye. What’s your business then? Developer, is it?”
“No. I’m a composer.”
“Really?” The barman sounded genuinely pleased. “I’ve got a few classical CDs myself. Brahms and so on. Much money in that, is there?”
Fugue. Gavin Inglis
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"Ten years on and I wasn’t Space Opera Sarson any more. I was Captain Samantha Sarson, Captain of the good ship Alphabet Boy, and no-one aboard knew my old nickname, though there were some old friends who still teased me about it in private. We were a fast-response hospital ship, Grade C, with twenty-odd crew (and I mean odd) and space for two hundred seriously injured soldiers."
Figaro. Jackie Hawkins
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"Alice lay in her bed listening to the music. This time it was the Impromptu No. 1 in F minor. Beside her bed was her pipe and bud and she lit it and smoked. She thought about Jason getting married. She had met the girlfriend once. Her name was Kim. If Alice was going to die she better do it soon, so Jason could get married. "
Like Clara, in the Movie “Heidi." Jill Zeller
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"It must be remembered that, around this time, several of their contemporaries were executed. We lost Howard Devoto, Mark E. Smith, Elvis Costello and Shaking Stevens. One can only dream of what these artists might have achieved had they lived. "
Shostakovich Ensemble, The. Jim Steel
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"She and the rest of Thevessels, with their faux-freckled complexions and fairy-floss waists, are laced into white corsets, robed in sheer fabric and begartered with lingerie ribbons. Soft veils fall before their kohl-rimmed eyes, which are kept modestly lowered, as Themothers lead them up into an unfamiliar shade of evening."
Singing Breath into the Dead. L.L. Hannett
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"In the top room of an eccentric old house on Rowan Street, Lewis Light was standing on a chair with a rope around his neck. The rope ran from his throat up to the ceiling fan, and from there down to one of the legs of the neatly made bed. At the moment, Lewis was not killing himself. He was taking notes."
The Legend of Left-Hand Lewis. Maxwell Peterson
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"The song thickens with harmonies, complicates with counterpoints. The hall resounds with impromptu calls and responses, but the basic song remains the same. The beat remains constant. The work gets done. “Did you?” Sandra's eyes are fixed on her work, but this contrapuntal aside is pitched to carry to Steve and no further. “Did you see? Last night on the TV?” She risks a second of eye contact to make sure that Steve has heard her. When she sees that she has his attention, those red lips breathe: “Arrhythmia...”
Arrhythmia. Neil Williamson
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"Len was a tall skinny white guy who came up from around Atlanta to the Big Apple to play jazz. He was a horn man, played cornet. Not trumpet. Cornet. He blew into town one day like a sugar wind from the South. One minute he wasn't there, the next minute he was all over the place. New York eats people, swallows whole crowds of sweet babies just for a snack, but Len was a brandy cherry, a hot pepper in the jello. Everybody on the scene knew it right away. This cat could play like a fucking angel."
Dybbuk Blues. Richard Jay Goldstein
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"I had been helping organise a conference on the Dead Sea Scrolls and heretical religions at the British Library in 1968 when the very people we were talking about showed up in a spaceship. I seriously thought Syd Barrett was probably saner than I was at that point. Was there something in the water? Or something in me? And that was the last I saw of London. To be honest, I was glad to be out of the place, although I did miss E. Christ almighty. I told them I needed her, ranted and raved about love and sex and drugs. They told me I had religious potential, and put me in one of their sleep pods."
Deep Field. Sean Martin
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"The core processors worked overtime, grinding through the wealth of spectral data from a hundred million motes of light. Through the ceramo-chitin composite hull he heard the whirr of motors as dozen of space-scopes roved their eyes over the heavens. "Where are we then, Oba?" Commander Ikari asked, irritably. "Can we cast the radio-nets?"
Lacuna Blues. Stephen Gaskell
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"The art of good accompaniment is delicate and – pardon the pun – unsung. One must be the subtlest of coaches, guiding the singer, the dancer or the instrumentalist towards the most ideal expression of his lines, while being able to blur or finesse over his mistakes. One must not only accept the reality of being unpraised and unnoticed, but strive for it."
The Accompanist. Susan Lanigan
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"Lorna’s skeleton of steel and carbon grew, a cathedral of spars and arches with the turning Earth beneath her feet, the sun above. Filigrees of titanium ribs, colloidal joints and aluminum webs, glistening with light. Lattices of metal waiting for the impulse to move and flex. Then skins of plastic, carbon and metal, a slick carapace. And air filled the void beneath the skin, then warmth. Gelatinous fibers writhed over the skeleton and set soft into an organic nexus. Synapses, relays, sensors. “Lorna, can you hear me?” “I hear.”
Lorna. Tom Brennan
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"Back then, Kerrang! ridiculed us as "Muse crossed with Led Zeppelin fronted by Amy Winehouse's bad sister, with added ballet." But we managed to build a huge fan-base, probably because we didn't sound like a bunch of Eighties throwbacks. Now, of course, we were just another prog-metal-ballet band (but hey, we were the first!)"
Star in a Glass. Vaughan Stanger
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"In addition, the end of the hostilities have left me with a month's wages — now sadly gone — my uniform, the aforementioned shield, a rather excellent sword and a left hand whose last three fingers won't bend. Ah, those fingers. Not a problem for the fighter I now am, perhaps, but for the musician I used to be, longed to become and hoped to be again, a somewhat sad predicament. "
Festspeel.Vincent Lauzon