This entry was originally written on 19th February 2012, sorry for the delay in publishing – Richard
I’m making absolutely excellent progress editing and rewriting Colonisation – my sci-fi novel about a group of young colonists flung to the Red Planet to set up the first of humanity’s new homes – and looking forward to making it available via eBook in the Summer sometime. I’m up to Chapter 7 (my original draft had 19; not counting the one that’s there and only has 245 words in it) and I have to say that writing sci-fi is proving really, really fun! I really do hope you’ll all love Rad, Stryker, Kyra and the other colonists as much as I’m learning to!
But an important tool for writing I’ve found is an inspirational soundtrack. Sure, listening to my Model M tapping away, the springs buckling like mad is a symphony of geek in its own right, but sometimes music can, I find, help the creative juiced flow in interesting ways and make great inspiration for things that might not have transpired. So today I want to run through the three or so albums that have so far comprised the soundtrack to writing Colonisation:
Well, how could I not write a book even remotely related to the Red Planet without a nod to HG Wells’ seminal novel, and it’s truly awesome musical interpretation. It’s quite hard to quantify what an immense piece of work this album is, but listening to it is not so much listening to an album, it is an experience. Seeing as Colonisation is, essentially, War of the Worlds in reverse, I couldn’t not listen to this album. It’s also pretty unusual and strangely ear-wormy, with the motifs and the back-and-forth between a rock band and an orchestra. Act I is strong and defiant, with the Martians asserting their control of the Earth, ending with the climactic battle between the ironclad Thunder Child and three Martian tripods, and is more subdued as the protagonist deals and tries to survive in a Martian-dominated world in Act II. Both a share a lineage but at the same time have very different tones. Definitely worth checking out, and they’re bringing out a new version this summer! I’m for now very content with the 2005 remastering of the 1978 classic. Perfection.
Anyone else mentally humming the Martian theme as they read the actual book after listening to the Musical Version? And if it’s just me, I don’t care if it makes me look odd. It’s good odd.
Portal is a very unusual game, and one I quickly found to love, love, love. The concept is original, the humour devilishly dark and dry, and there’s a fair few sci-fi pastiches in the games to boot. I’ve had many hours of fun working out the Portal 1 and 2 puzzles, but a key part of the atmosphere, which is especially prevalent in the second game (which I played at night and felt very, very alone in) is the music. It has an ethereal, but modern, spacey design to it which suits Colonisation down to the ground. Colonisation isn’t a book where everything is just fine, no, so Portal’s eerie and haunting tones came in useful for inspiring me for the bleaker sections, where it looked like all hope was lost for Rad, and as I wrote a lot of Colonisation as I played the games – at night – it also got me in the correct and fitting mood to write those scenes, to feel what the characters were feeling.
And Want You Gone provided a burst of deliciously dry GLaDOS humour, right in there. Huge success!
Total Annihilation is a strategy game from 1997 that has been criminally underrated and largely forgotten about. I, however, loved the game and it’s spiritual successor, Supreme Commander. Like with Portal, the music only helped set the atmosphere and mood to the game just right; the game would play some of the more melancholic tracks during a lull or recovery from an attack and would know just when to burst out the epic attack themes just as my massive army of Kbots would march forth once my nuke landed and sweep away any resistance. Unlike Portal, however, Jeremy Soule provided an entirely orchestral, almost Hollywood-eque soundtrack that just works as an excellent… anachronism, for lack of a better word, for the sci-fi setting of the game. It works to get the player fired up for a massive battle, or to rub their wounds after the climax of an encounter, and this proved very hospitable for writing battle scenes or the comedown from them. I was just very glad that the game publishers had the foresight to include the soundtrack as a dual Audio/Data CD along with the game, so it was easily ripped to a digital format before my discs decayed and were scratched, unfortunately, beyond use.
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