Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2019
Journal Title
Sound American
Issue Number
The Lee Hyla Issue
Version
Post-print: the version of the article having undergone peer review but prior to being published
Disciplines
Music
Abstract
Sexy cyborgs, gruesome monsters, invasions and body-snatchings: common perceptions of science fiction tend to cite such “pulpy” scenarios as evidence that the genre at best lacks substance and at worst supports misogynist and xenophobic views. Yet, if one adopts a broader definition of science fiction as any piece using science-inspired fantasy as a mode of social discourse, the genre then encompasses a dizzying array of canonic literary works spanning the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. This expansion of science fiction to include works that traffic in what could be called the “scientific imagination” need not be contained to the artistic discipline of literature; fantasies about science and technology (both real and imagined) have fueled the aesthetics of modernism in art and music throughout the twentieth century, including avant-garde U.S. composer Johanna Beyer’s (1888-1944) unfinished avant-garde opera, Status Quo (1938).
Digital USD Citation
Noble, Charissa, "We Will Join the Spheres Once More’: Social Critique and the Scientific Imagination in Johanna Beyer’s Status Quo" (2019). Music: Faculty Scholarship. 1.
https://digital.sandiego.edu/musc-faculty/1
Notes
Also available at Sound American: https://soundamerican.org/issues/hyla/we-will-join-spheres-once-more-social-critique-and-scientific-imagination-johanna