Music of the Spears: Aliens Series [Paperback]

Yvonne Navarro (Author)

Book Description

Series: Aliens Series | Publication Date: September 1, 1996

Driven to madness by his rage against the ugliness of life in Manhattan in the year 2214, a composer tries to shock the world out of its ugliness with a fiendish piece of music and an alien called Mozart.

Editorial Reviews

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

"I want...an alien."

The double take Damon expected never came; Keene didn't even blink. The executive's hands remained folded calmly on the desk's highly polished surface, the reflection below his fingers making him look like some double-handed android built to play a newly invented hellrock instrument. "You want an alien," Keene repeated. Damon squelched the impulse to remind Keene that this wasn't a psychiatric bull session where the doctor repeated everything the patient said to make sure he had understood it clearly. "Let's see." Keene continued. "You're not into weapons, so that's out. You're not into medicine or drugs, either. That puts those out of the picture. So exactly what do you need an alien for, Damon?"

Damon spread his hands, unconsciously willing Keene to understand, to show the slightest trace of empathy. "For the sound." The last word carried on the filtered air of the office like a drawn-out whisper, a sibilant floating in the air that teased both of them. Finally, a reluctant crack in Keene's disposition as the older man unwillingly bonded with Damon's dreams for an instant, hearing as the eccentric artist did the alien singing from its steel throat and screaming with a tongue of acidic flame.

Damon's words faded away as he and Keene stared at each other.

Bitter memories flash-danced in Damon's head as he waited for Keene's decree, and he remembered the first time an alien's screams had ever found its way into his ears. It had been on a vidscreen in a store window, a NewsVid item from Channel 86 about an infestation in the Long Island Incarceration Colony, sensationalist crap designed solely to grab the passersby and glue them to a vidscreen. And it had worked on Damon, though not for the reasons the media planners might have anticipated. The footage had shown a clot of aliens bunched in a subbasement of the LIIC's main prison, on the defensive against an army troop wearing suits constructed of the same material labs used to store acid and bearing flamethrowers loaded with long-burning jellied napalm. To Damon the creatures' screams had translated to one thing, unadulterated or diluted: hate.

And Damon hated  so very, very much...

How many reviewers had slammed his work as "tiresome," or "obscure," or, worst of all, "boring"? The reviewers detested him, the public ignored him, Synsound humored him. All the while he struggled on, trying desperately to reach a public that seemed to want only hellrock or bloodrock, or--God help them--android singers and performers so mutated that they had four arms, multiple heads, and mouths coming out of their mouths in a twisted parody of aliens. The closest John Q. Public came to exposure to the gentler sounds of the past was, again, in recreated androids; before dwindling into ambiguity, Elvis Presley's duplicate had piqued enough interest to gain a hall named after it, and Caruso's fabricated double sang for the upper class every night at the NewMet Opera House. A steady trickle of credits from the older generation supported Synsound projects like "Buddy Holly Sings Garth Brooks III" and thousands of other re-recordings of centuries-dead artists--androids of Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, Charlie Parker, Clifford Brown, Richie Valens, Dwayne Allman, John Lennon, Patsy Cline, and others regularly belted out new hits.

And Synsound, owner of practically every piece of music and musician in the world--including Damon--sat above it all with people at its helm like Jarlath Keene, a man with virtually no imagination, no vision. As far as Damon was concerned, the stages of Presley Hall were the Manhattan home of hell on earth, filled with appalling reengineered mutadroids that were half android, half mutated instrument, surrounded by the dregs of humanity who flocked to listen to the groups. Few people appreciated Damon's careful live recordings of serious music, the darker blends from wonderful classic composers like Beethoven, Paganini, Mozart, Vivaldi, Bach, so much beautiful music recorded on rare twentieth-century instruments--violins, harps, dulcimers--all expensive and a struggle to come by. Synsound again, indulging him, using him as a pawn to show the world how it sponsored and supported what remained of the "arts" while it survived--prospered--on the ridiculous, discordant trash for which the people of this century constantly clamored. He hated Synsound almost as much as he detested the concertgoers who appreciated only torture and terror, responded only to the grotesque, frightening androids cavorting and screaming on the stage. If what they wanted was hate, and pain, and the repulsive, Damon decided, he would give them exactly that.

The press conference he'd called was only a stage for him to announce to the country and every place the NewsVid would carry the story how much he hated--John Q. Public, Synsound, everything. His tirade against Synsound and its customers had gone on for as long as he dared before he feared the media would turn away in boredom. "For you all, for Synsound," he'd railed into their microphones, "I will write the ultimate composition...a Symphony of Hate!"  Afterwards his employer smiled its corporate face and nodded, pleased at the attention its pet artiste had generated and shrugging off Damon's anger with a humorous attitude. He was an artist after all; they were supposed to be temperamental, angry, excitable. It was those very feelings that made them creative.

Damon's work on his masterpiece had carried him everywhere. No place was too dark or dangerous: he visited madhouses, prison wards, even execution chambers where he watched killers leave this world shrieking in rage. A favorite haunt was the downtown government detox center where the screams of jelly junkies bruised the eardrums and forced the workers to wear hearing protection.

But it was the news item that made Damon search the sound library for VidDiscs from the Homeworld War of ten years ago. The poor quality and low fidelity of the military recording devices didn't matter; the screams of the aliens as they fought and were destroyed blasted through Damon's senses like electricity, burning his mind, stealing his breath. No one and nothing else in the world sounded like an alien, nothing. And nowhere else did the creatures' shrieks of malevolence belong more than in Damon Eddington's Symphony of Hate.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Spectra; First Edition edition (September 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553574922
• ISBN-13: 978-0553574920
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,238,102 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I was born back in the early days when black and white photographs were considered normal instead of artsy. As a child I always thought I'd grow up to be an artist, and I was was convinced I'd spend my life doing line drawings of long, leggy models like the ones in the daily newspapers. Life, however, did not cooperate: a foul-up in grammar school resulted in a transfer to a local high school instead of the technical, arts-heavy one I'd planned to attend.

Following that was a move that really made things start winding around. By the time I returned to Chicago for the second time in 1981, I'd worked as a waitress, a nurse's aide, a bookkeeper and gift shop cashier, an accounting clerk, and a secretary in everything from office furniture stores to a hotel to a journalism society. In 1981 I came back to my old job in a Chicago law firm and settled down in the Windy City for awhile. In 1982 I tried to write because my mother said "You could do this." The seed had still been planted, and I sold my first story in 1984. Since then I've written around a hundred stories, most of which have been or are scheduled to be published.

My first novel, AfterAge, was published in 1993 and was a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. In 1995 my second solo novel, deadrush, was published, and it also was a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award, this time in the category of Superior Achievement in a novel. Final Impact, the third solo novel, was published in 1997, and won both the Chicago Women In Publishing's Award for Excellence in Adult Fiction and the "Unreal Worlds" Award for Best Horror Paperback of 1997 from the Rocky Mountain News. Since then I've published several more solo novels, Red Shadows (a follow-up to Final Impact), DeadTimes, and That's Not My Name, her first suspense novel. That's Not My Name, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Paleo, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Willow Files, Vol. 2 all won at the Illinois State level of the IWPA 2001 Mate E. Palmer Communications contest (two first place and one second place, respectively), plus I somehow swept all three awards of the Short Story category with "Ascension," "Divine Justice," and "Santa Alma." I've also written a number of media tie-in novels, including several Buffy the Vampire Slayer novels, Hellboy, Elektra, and Ultraviolet. Full info about all her books can be found on her website along with a lot of free excerpts.

I moved to my beloved Arizona in 2002 and currently work on historic Fort Huachuca. in southern Arizona. Numerically, I'm up to about twenty novels and one non-fiction book, with those never-ending plans for more. I love heat, Godiva chocolates, and Great Danes.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dark, brooding, and all-out great!, December 6, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Music of the Spears: Aliens Series (Paperback)

I can't believe that no one's reviewed this yet. This was my third favorite ALIENS novel (first being "Female War" and second being "Labyrinth"). I think this book stands out in the series for several reasons, the biggest being that there is absolutely no action whatsoever, but the most important being that I'd actually consider this a "real" novel. Don't get me wrong - there are some other great books in this series (I've already mentioned two), but for the most part they usually consist of no more than graphic violence, killing, and sex. This book was different in that it had done of that stuff and actually had a plot! Imagine that!

I think most ALIENS fans will understand me when I say that the books and comics in this series follow a pretty predictable storyline: all alone in space, no one can hear you scream, etc. This had a beautifully crafted plot; was dark and stirred deep emotions; and, I felt, captured the atmosphere of the movie that started it all, ALIEN. I also love the way the future is portrayed; just what things would be like after an entire world massacre by a hostile species if you ask me.

Another plus is the way she handles the music. It's kind of hard to write a book about music because (obviously) you can't actually 'hear' the music she's describing, but she did such a great job that there were times when I almost thought I did hear it...

All in all, I'd consider this the most mature of the series, which is probably why a lot of peolpe won't like it. They'll think it's too slow and won't bother finishing it and will end up missing out on a great book. I can only hope that Yvonne Navarro is up for a second novel is this series which could very much use a facelift!

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Insipid, Irritating, and Uninspired, June 19, 2009

By 

Ana Mardoll (United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Music of the Spears: Aliens Series (Paperback)

Aliens Novels: Book 8, Music of the Spears / 0-553-57492-2

As I'm going through reading all the aliens books in order (although all of them have been non-sequential, self-contained stories after the third book, The Female War), I have found that few things irritate me so much as an author who felt no need to do any research whatsoever into the aliens universe. The only thing more irritating that this might perhaps be a science fiction author who doesn't understand the concept of science fiction. In "Music of the Spears", author Navarro manages to handily fit both categories.

Navarro has apparently never seen a single aliens movie nor read a single aliens book, a fact demonstrated by her not knowing the first thing about aliens, period. She has decided that the "derelict space craft" she keeps hearing about from that first movie Alien was built *by* the aliens, demonstrating a level of sentience and intelligence that the aliens have since "lost" - a puzzle the author solves by having the aliens de-evolving in captivity on Earth.

Now, forget fanboy facts like aliens not being advanced enough to create their own space crafts, as outlined in every book and movie on the subject. Forget that the movie clearly emphasized that the aliens on the derelict ship were not pilots (Navarro hasn't, apparently, seen the famous scene with the desiccated, chest-bursted pilot fossilized to the helm). Forgetting all of that, just consider the implications of the alien species EVER having the ability to build spaceships and navigate the stars: that would make them completely unstoppable. The only weak point in the aliens is that they are 'trappable' on planets and ships, and the human victims have a chance at getting away from the planet/ship they've been trapped on. If the aliens could just up and take off to wherever they pleased, why wouldn't they have conquered the universe at this point, or at least the better part of our galaxy?

Similarly, a new "fact" we're treated to is that the aliens "see" by sonar (similar to bats) and the sound waves they use to "see" their surroundings is a constant, audible hiss. Not only does this contradict all other alien sources, it doesn't make sense: aliens are scary because they can creep silently up behind you and grab you before you even knew they were there, but it's impossible to be sneaky when you sound like a perpetual leaky tire.

Navarro is apparently dimly aware, probably via her franchise contact, that the previous books in the series have featured an alien-human war on Earth that resulted in (a) something like 70% of all humans dead, with the remaining 30% scattered randomly through space in a panicked species-wide Diaspora, and (b) the Earth being physically ravaged by war, alien occupation, and by massive, planet-wide nuclear bombs. A science fiction universe operating under those rules would look just a tiny bit different from our own. Racial lines would almost certainly be completely blurred by the massively reduced population and the mixed genetic content of the hastily-boarded escape pods, a reality that Piers Anthony predicted long ago in his Race Against Time. Major cities would be completely decimated by war and would have to be rebuilt from the ground up, if they were even built at all - "New York" would literally become "New New York", as Futurama satirically notes. Technology would be more advanced for this space-faring race resettling a decimated planet, an obvious fact since before Star Trek aired a single series.

In Navarro's Manhattan, however, right across the street from the World Trade Center (unmarred by aliens or nuclear war), lies the music company Synsound which is owned and run by a Japanese man (who has maintained his Japanese language, customs, and genetics despite the Diaspora), and of course he's also an ex-member of the Yakuza (it's nice to see a violent gang maintain cohesion through a crisis). He naturally has at his disposal a group of ninjas who are hand-picked Japanese-American immigrants (the futuristic world government of the previous books having apparently fractured at some point back into the twentieth century governments that Navarro is more familiar with) who, as a prerequisite for joining, don't speak a lick of English (because a species hovering on the verge of extinction has the luxury of avoiding a common language). The ninjas carry ancient family-heirloom Samurai swords (thank god there was room to load the heirlooms on the escape pods, although it's a shame that there wasn't room for Grandma after the swords had been packed). This particular group of ninjas is "perfect" for fighting aliens because, as Navarro patiently explains, Samurai swords cleanly take off the aliens' limbs.

Um...what? Not to sound like a raging fanboy, but taking off a limb should result in a spray of deadly acid. Speaking of which, not only should those heirloom swords *not* be able to pierce an alien carapace, they should not even exist after the first cut. Apparently when they make ancient Samurai swords, they make them acid-proof against alien acids that otherwise melt all compounds! It's just too bad they didn't share that ancient secret with all the ship-makers and armory departments outfitting the marines or that whole Diaspora thing possibly could have been averted.

Anyway, the ninjas come in handy because a rival pharmaceutical company (the music industry absolutely HATES the medical industry) has a secret alien lab and the ninjas are able to duck under security cameras (they can afford an alien lab, but they didn't want to go overboard on security cameras), kill the aliens in a one-on-one battle, and kidnap an egg. All this trouble because Synsound is humoring a musician who wants to re-record Mussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain", but with alien screams mixed in, which isn't anywhere near as creative as what Fantasia did with the same piece five decades before Navarro put pen to paper. The alien cage is constructed according to specifications drawn up from the lead ninja's "instincts" and the alien is monitored by two low-level scientists armed with clipboards and dot matrix printers, apparently still the fashion in the 2100s. It's never clear why the company is willing to break so many laws and spend so much money on this project that they know will be hugely unprofitable, but we get past that by not talking about it.

The rest of the novel is spent moralizing for many, many pages about the immorality of feeding people to an alien for a crappy music re-mix. Oh, yeah, and those people are old college friends of the musician, hand-picked by the company apparently for no other reason than to mess with him. Oh, snap!

Other offensively stupid things about this novel include the tame, muzzled alien named "Old Blue" that the company keeps on hand as a tracker "dog". There's the investigators handling acid-soaked alien corpses with nothing more than gloves on their hands (on reflection, perhaps it's not that Navarro didn't read the books, perhaps it's that she just doesn't understand the concept of 'acid'). There's the return to the god-awful royal jelly plot, with royal jelly being a drug that is magically both a stimulant AND a soporific, and literally impossible to overdose on. There's also the underlying racism that every minority in the novel has to justify their existence by being a stereotypical "angry black man" or "oriental ninja".

Do yourself a favor and skip this novel entirely. The whole thing is a tepid, moralizing screed, more whiny than introspective, and with enough inaccuracies and blatant stupidity to choke a horse. Since the series stopped being sequential many books ago, I can assure you, you won't be missing anything at all.

~ Ana Mardoll

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mozart and the Hive, March 15, 2002

By 

TastyBabySyndrome "Matthew Lewis, author of M... ("Daddy Dagon's Daycare" - Proud Sponsor of the Little Tendril Baseball Team, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Music of the Spears: Aliens Series (Paperback)

This novel, because of its unique perspective and oddly toned outlook on the Alien influence on human behavior, is a must read for anyone who finds the alien appealing. Here, we are introduced to a type of obsessive that differs from any of the previous people encountered (in the reasoning behind his actions, that is), while still touching on that all-too-understood corporate manipulation approach. (Personally, I like this left in the storylines because it stays true to the original movie and makes an interesting social observation) Here, we find ourselves immersed in the "modern" music industry, where bands are produced, cloned, and so on, with our main character wanting something different. He wants to make music Alien style. So, with the help of Mozart and a bit of Xeno-Zip, he voyages into realms that are ultra yummy in a dark, foreboding sense.
This book, because of the author's style and the approach that the book takes, truly stands on its own. Everyone should check it out.