Science Fiction-Music Interconnections: The Adventures of Spaceship Hawkwind, starring Robert Calvert and Michael Moorcock

Formed in late-1960s London, Hawkwind were the pioneers of a strand of Progressive Rock known as ‘Space Rock,’ incorporating cosmic themes and musical experimentation in a style which assimilated “repetitive hypnotic beats and electronic/ambient soundscapes.” Their shifting line-up was augmented by the addition of South African-born poet and writer Robert Calvert, who had been involved with street theatre and underground magazines, and occasionally by the English author and editor Michael Moorcock; both shared the same counter-cultural aspirations and background in the Ladbroke Grove/Notting Hill area as the band, and brought literary and particularly science-fictional inspiration to Hawkwind’s sound.

From their first (and only) hit, 1971’s ‘Silver machine’, with lyrics by Calvert, and on the subsequent album In Search of Space, Hawkwind produced otherworldly music and explored science fiction themes, creating the template for a series of ground-breaking albums during the 1970s. In Search of Space and the follow-up album, Doremi Fasol Latido, introduced the ‘Starfarer’ concept, “a loose story line involving the adventures of Spaceship Hawkwind and its eventual crash-landing on Earth.” Calvert functioned as the band’s ‘resident poet,’ giving spoken-word recitals during concerts, composing lyrics and appearing as lead vocalist on record. Favourites on the UK’s then-flourishing free festival circuit, Hawkwind presented an on-stage spectacular with dancers and lightshow to accompany their live performances – captured on 1973’s Space Ritual, regarded as “the ultimate space rock album.” Lavishly packaged, the artwork was by regular associate, graphic artist Barney Bubbles, who also wrote a short sci-fi story of Spaceship Hawkwind for the performance programme, building on their existing overall Starfarer concept of the band travelling through time and space. Calvert’s manic-depressive condition and the demands of touring took their toll, and he drifted in and out of the line-up, his role on stage and as lyricist intermittently filled by his friend Michael Moorcock as a self-confessed “understudy,” who contributed ‘The Black Corridor’ (adapted from his own 1969 novel) and ‘Sonic Attack’ to Space Ritual.

A prolific author and, from 1964, editor of the magazine New Worlds – where he had published some of Calvert’s poetry – Moorcock found acclaim with the Cornelius Quartet of novels, following the weird and wonderful adventures of central character, Jerry Cornelius, a psychedelic harlequin-secret agent, an anti-hero of the times, picking his way through the debris of ‘swinging London’ and all points beyond. The first of the novels, 1968’s The Final Programme, was filmed in 1973 (though the result was much to the author’s disapproval); Mick Jagger was reputedly approached to play the lead, only to decline the Cornelius role as ‘too freaky.’ The Jagger connection was not coincidental – amongst other endeavours, Cornelius fronts a pop group known as the Deep Fix, a name Moorcock used in turn for his own musical project when he came to record the 1975 Concept Album The New Worlds Fair. In the same year he contributed lyrics to, and was credited as the originator of, Hawkwind’s album Warrior on the Edge of Time – based on his concept of the Eternal Champion, a recurring character found in different guises throughout his work, including Jerry Cornelius. The connection between author and group was further cemented by a series of dubious genre novels attributed to Moorcock and Michael Butterworth (though primarily the work of the latter, Moorcock’s name guaranteed respectable sales), beginning with Time of the Hawklords in 1976, featuring the band as protagonists in a series of sci-fi-inspired adventures.

Once Robert Calvert took the helm on a more permanent basis as lead singer and songwriter in 1976, he oversaw a shift in Hawkwind’s conceptual concerns. Their later-70s output focused more on dystopian and futuristic themes, closer in spirit to the contemporary work of J. G. Ballard than the fantasy territory they had previously explored, in keeping with Calvert’s experimental solo albums. This phase began with Astounding Sounds, Amazing Music (referencing the classic magazines of early science fiction), continued with 1977’s acclaimed Quark Strangeness and Charm and culminated in their final album of the decade, PXR-5, the last to feature Calvert, and released after his departure from the band. Calvert and Moorcock (whose versatility saw him expertly turn his hand to any style within – and occasionally outside – the sci-fi genre) had similar preoccupations, and while Calvert was a captivating, at times eccentric and flamboyant front-man, the pair’s work is complementary. After Calvert left to pursue his own projects, Moorcock continued to perform with Hawkwind on a regular basis and worked with them throughout the 1980s, notably on the albums Sonic Attack and Chronicle of the Black Sword, “all but one of whose songs are based on his Elric saga (the other, ‘Needle Gun’ is about Jerry Cornelius).”

Whilst Robert Calvert sadly died in 1988, Michael Moorcock remains a celebrated and successful author; a variety of splinter groups featuring original or one-time members of Hawkwind (including founders Dave Brock and Nik Turner) continue to tour the UK and world-wide, under a number of related band names. In their various incarnations they are recognised as innovators and prime exponents of a distinctive and enduring style, an influential and widely-respected group whose admirers include such diverse musical figures as Jello Biafra, Julian Cope, John Lydon and Henry Rollins.

Science Fiction in 1966 – UK: New Worlds and J.G. Ballard

Introduction

Fifty years ago: a tumultuous year in a decade marked by rapid social, technological and cultural change, a snapshot of 1966 captures science fiction in the process of evolution, absorbing outside influences and re-defining its possibilities – a mirror of its wider social context. With the broadcast of the first Star Trek episode in North America that year, and Doctor Who going strong in the UK since 1963, science fiction had widespread exposure on the rising medium of television and, in Fantastic Voyage, one of the year’s most successful films. There was sufficient interest in publications beyond the mainstream to allow for a thriving sub-culture of independent journals and fanzines. Novels such as Daniel Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon and Harry Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room! were well-acclaimed examples of science fiction’s continued relevance, even as fresh possibilities emerged. Various factors, including a keen interest in ‘literary’ writers – notably William Burroughs, whose experimental novel Naked Lunch was first published as a paperback in 1966 – suggested new directions for genre fiction, just as modern art and popular music began to incorporate ideas from the avant-garde, which were in turn adopted by the burgeoning counter-culture. These developments helped to create a climate for a gradual move away from traditional science fiction toward more contemporary settings and subversive themes.

To be continued...

Part One 

The highly-regarded English science fiction magazine, New Worlds, began a process of transformation in 1964, when Michael Moorcock took over as editor. Moorcock has written that he was “interested in broadening the possibilities of the SF idiom and New Worlds... seemed the best place to do it.” His predecessor as editor, E.J. ‘Ted’ Carnell, was a stalwart of the domestic science fiction scene since the ‘Golden Age’ of the 1930s – an attendee at the very first convention of 1937 – and perceived as being representative of an outmoded and conservative notion of the genre. By 1966, Moorcock’s avowed intention after replacing Carnell – to steer the magazine away from its increasingly dated preoccupations with alien invasions and far-flung galaxies, and to embrace contemporary art and avant-garde literature, such as that of Eduardo Paolozzi and William Burroughs – was being put into practice. February 1966 saw the inclusion of ‘A Two-Timer’ by David I. Masson, Head of Special Collections at the University of Leeds, who brought an academic rigour and keen interest in linguistics to the established time-travel formula.







Another writer eager to seize the opportunity to adapt and subvert familiar concerns was J.G. Ballard, already an established author but whose work at that time was moving in the same trajectory as the magazine, away from traditional themes and toward the experimental works for which he was to become (in)famous. Ballard’s autobiography, Miracles of Life, relates that it was in fact Carnell, while associated with “a rather conventional view of the nature of science fiction”, who had begun to encourage this development as early as a decade before, and Moorcock who endorsed it. Carnell recognised “that science fiction needed to change if it was to remain at the cutting edge of the future” and accordingly urged Ballard to “concentrate on what I termed ‘inner space’, psychological tales close in spirit to the surrealists.” While his full-length books that year, The Crystal World and the short-story collection The Impossible Man, broadly conformed to genre expectations, he used New Worlds and the literary magazine Ambit (for which he contributed a lengthy review of Burroughs to the Spring 1966 edition) as vehicles to pursue his new direction. These “fragmented narratives” or “condensed novels” included ‘The Assassination Weapon’, ‘You: Coma: Marilyn Monroe’ (published in both magazines) and, appearing in the 1966/67 edition of Ambit, ‘The Assassination of J.F. Kennedy Considered As A Downhill Motor Race’, short pieces that were later to form part of one of his most notorious books, 1970’s The Atrocity Exhibition. 1966 thus found Ballard in a period of transition, publishing conventional work while simultaneously developing the more daring and disturbing approach which was to carve him a unique and hugely influential place in modern science fiction.

Ambit #29, Autumn 1966

Futures Past: SF History in Leeds, P.7 Interzone Today and Tomorrow

Following on from our previous post on the origins of Interzone, Andy Hedgecock, current co-editor, kindly agreed to be interviewed, and to share his thoughts on the past, present, and of course future of the magazine:

How aware are you of the origins of Interzone?

I’m reasonably aware of the magazine’s history, but I make no claim to academic rigour in respect of this. I’m not an obsessive sf historian!

There’s a fine line between being a raconteur or a bore, but I’d like to risk relating my personal history in relation to David Pringle’s Interzone, in particular my initial collision with the magazine in WH Smith in Southampton. It was late 1982, I think, and I was working down there as a researcher for a management consultancy, doing work I found morally dubious and making myself thoroughly miserable. This was a really bad time for me: I didn’t have the insight or sense of direction to change jobs; I wasn’t enamoured with a socio-political landscape in which greed, careerism and self-interest flourished; and the post-punk cultural scene was predictable, unchallenging and trammelled by a fashionable obsession with gloss and surface. It may sound familiar to younger people in 2014.

Anyway, at some stage of my visit to the South Coast I slipped out of the late lamented Polygon Hotel (known locally as the dead parrot for obvious reasons) and treated myself to a copy of this new magazine. I’ve probably projected my own needs and views onto Interzone, but it became a little beacon of hope for me – along with the new Channel 4, the anarchist newspaper Freedom, the radical writers working in Glasgow (including Alasdair Gray and James Kelman) and, of course, Michael Moorcock, whose cultural criticism and fiction stood in opposition to the ghastliness of the early 1980s. And I’m grateful to David Pringle for his role in that.     

I became a regular but non-subscribing reader in the early years. I’ve just been scrabbling about on the top shelf on a very tall bookcase looking for copies from the late 1980s and early 1990s. I nearly broke my neck, but I forgive you as it’s provided some interesting moments of nostalgia. The work that attracted me to early Pringle-era Interzone was Angela Carter, Pamela Zoline, John Sladek, Rachel Pollack, Brian Aldiss, JG Ballard, Barrington Bayley, Keith Roberts, Thomas Disch, M John Harrison and, of course, Michael Moorcock. Many of those writers, as I’m sure you’ll have noticed, were associated with New Worlds and I think I saw Interzone as continuing in the risk-taking tradition of Moorcock’s magazine. Having said that, it also introduced me to writers whose work was new to me – Geoff Ryman, John Crowley, John Shirley, and Kim Newman, Colin Greenland, Greg Egan, Cherry Wilder, William Gibson, Beil Ferguson, John Gribbin, Gary Kilworth and Bruce Sterling. 

As the years passed Interzone became a bit too hard sf for my own tastes, but I kept in touch with it as an occasional reader and still enjoyed much of what I read. In terms of history, I know David Pringle was supported by a group that included John Clute, Colin Greenland (a massively talented writer and critic who I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing for the Andy Cox-era Interzone) and Alan Dorey, a writer and broadcaster who does a cracking music programme called The Musical Box, for Forest FM in Dorset. Well worth catching online.     

Do you see yourself as continuing in the tradition of David Pringle and previous editors?

I can’t answer for Andy Cox of other members of the editorial group but I certainly see a degree of continuity with the David Pringle era. David Pringle took the name from a risk-taking and experimental collection of stories by William Burroughs and it reflects very well the cutting edge and eclectic nature of his magazine. Andy Cox’s roots as a publisher and editor are in the slipstream magazine The Third Alternative, which published sf, fantasy horror and slipstream stories. TTA Press’ successor to The Third Alternative  focuses exclusively on horror, crime stories are published in Crimewave and the sf, fantasy, surreal, weird and otherwise idiosyncratic genre fiction we publish finds its way into Interzone. It’s still eclectic and we still like to take risks. Like David, Andy sets high literary standards for the stories we include. We continue encourage a degree of stylistic experiment and we’re interested in behaviour in extreme situations, diverse psychologies and liminal experiences. Like David Pringle we look for stories that offer new mythologies to enable us to make sense of our experiences and thoughts. If there is a disconnect between the late-Pringle era and the Cox-era it may be that the latter is a little less focused on scientific and technological development, but I wouldn’t like to have to defend that under rigorous academic examination!

The first two editions of Interzone, 1982.

What do you consider your greatest achievement in your time at the magazine?

If I may I’ll choose something from a personal perspective that’s about opportunities I’ve been given. In terms of achievement I’d rather identify something on behalf of the editorial collective.   

There are two things I’m really delighted to have been able to do. One is to have been able to take part in interviews with writers such as Ken McLeod, Michael Moorcock, Terry Pratchett, John Shirley and Susanna Clarke. The other, and the more important, has been to help find really impressive work by new and developing writers, some of whom had gone on to establish formidable reputations. And I think that brings us onto the greatest achievement element.  We’ve passed a number of important milestones: 10 years of the TTA Press ‘flavour’ of Interzone under Andy Cox’s stewardship; we’ve contributed to Interzone being published for more than 30 years; only around a dozen Nebula award-winning stories were published in magazines and one of those is a story we selected, Eugie Foster’s 'Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast'; we’re the current holder of the British Fantasy Society award for Best Magazine / Periodical; and we’re nominated (again) for a Hugo Award in the Best Semiprozine category. All of which is very encouraging, it’s nice to receive recognition, but I think the thing I’m most proud of is helping Andy Cox set very exacting standards in terms of literary worth, originality and storytelling energy when we select tales for Interzone. We have a good record in terms of Interzone stories being selected for prestigious anthologies, which is far more important than winning awards and celebrating our longevity.  Most of the time Andy and I converge very quickly on what’s promising but not quite right for us, what’s brilliant, what’s bad and what’s simply baffling. It’s a painful process at times – particularly when I get an email-based poke in the ribs for exhibiting spectacularly poor taste. Over the past 10 years we’ve worked with some absolutely brilliant writers – Nina Allan, Neil Williamson, Jason Sanford, Aliette de Bodard, Georgina Bruce, Suzanne Palmer… That list, off the top of my head, reflects something that isn’t our achievement but it is something we should celebrate. Over the past decade we’ve seen an increasing number of stories by women writers in the mag.  

Do you think that science fiction has become more ‘mainstream’ in popular culture over the three decades since Interzone was founded?

I think it’s roughly as mainstream as it was in the early 1980s. There have been some notable entries into genre storytelling by writers very much associated with literary fiction, for example Jane Roger’s The Testament of Jessie Lamb and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. But hasn’t there always been this traffic across the sf&f vs ‘litfic’ border? Anthony Burgess, Kingsley Amis, Virginia Wolfe, Don Delillo, Richard Brautigan, Vladimir Nabokov, Mark Twain …? I suppose we could point to Haruki Murakami, Will Self and George Saunders as writers who take a hatchet to genre boundaries by mixing sf, fantasy, crime and absurd realism throughout their work. But even that isn’t something that’s developed in the past 30 years.  But all three of those writers draw on the work of Pynchon and Vonnegut, with the same cavalier approach to literary and genre tropes and techniques whose careers took off in the 1960s. 

The concerns of genre and mainstream writers have changed over the years – I’d argue more attention is paid to issues of environmental sustainability, and debt seems to be a more frequently recurring motif. We receive a lot of stories dealing with survival in extremis, the misuse of power and control and shifts of identity.  But these are perennial themes in sf and fantasy. 

I think the literary mainstream and inventive genres revivify each other by trading structures, tools, techniques and obsessions. But I believe that has always been the case.

Interzone 221; artwork by Adam Tredowski

How do you see the future of Interzone and more widely, (science fiction) publishing?

Blimey. Isn’t it interesting how sf editors fall apart and become mumbling wrecks when you ask them about the future? I don’t think we operate in a prophetic way: we celebrate the wondrous and astonishing in storytelling and marvel at the creative way writers and artists invent, remix and repurpose ideas and symbols. If we get hung up on making predictions Interzone might become predictable. It’s not our role to predict the next big thing, just to recognise it when it ambles to the door of TTA Towers.    

There is however one area in which a spot of crystal gazing is essential. Magazine production isn’t cheap and distribution is really, really expensive, particularly if you have an international readership and particularly if there is a lot of fluctuation between currencies. So the online publishing option has its attractions. Having said that, a lot of readers enjoy Interzone as an object (with, we hope, stunning artwork and colour) that drops through their post box every two months. I’m part of the generation for whom the graphic interface version of internet arrived in their thirties and I still prefer to read from paper. I think there will be a need for print publication for the foreseeable future, but the e-version of the mag will become increasingly important. Sustainability and cost will both become increasingly important issues I suspect. The big problem is whether people will pay for online literature – I suspect the shift to e-publishing will exacerbate the crisis relating to paying creative people for cultural output. People seem increasingly reluctant to pay. This is reflected, for example, by the fact that increasing numbers of writers and editors have ‘day jobs’ that subsidise the work they love doing. This is a problem for publishing in general rather than sf publishing. 

In terms of the genre, we may see another swing of the pendulum back to technology and science as a focus for sf; there may be more intense exploration of psychological inner space; we may see more satirical sf. We may plunge into a period of deep pessimism with stories that undermine the notion of progress, or we may experience a wave of high energy optimism focusing on growth, development, possibility and problem solving. I don’t know. The message to our contributors and potential contributors is – as always – surprise us.