king@Kestrel (07/17/85)
From: king@Kestrel.ARPA _________________________________ >Date: 13 Jul 85 01:24:32 GMT > And as an attempt to come up with a gap-bridging > conversation-starter, can anyone think of interesting examples of > written SF in which music played a dominant theme? One such might > be Melinda Snodgrass's Star Trek novel, > _The_Tears_of_the_Singers_. > Jay Reynolds Freeman (Schlumberger Palo Alto Research) One example that comes to mind, in which music is at least moderately important, is Windhaven (author forgotten). ****************** SPOILER WARNING ************************* The Windhaven society lives on a planet with a large number of small islands, and with sufficient steady wind to make high-tech hang gliders a satisfactory but somewhat hazardous means of transportation of people (and of messages via people). The society was seeded by a crashed solar-sail starship, whose sail was cut up to make the virtually indestructible, but losable at sea, gliders. Fliers wield considerable power, but singers also wield considerable power, there being few other forms of entertainment. Important protagonists include a person who wants to be a singer but who is required by society's rules to become a flier, and other singers, acting as propogandists at various junctures and lending color