Ben's Songs

Skroderiders are one of several iconic alien races in Vernor Vinge's classic A Fire Upon the Deep— cyborgs consisting of a sessile, frond-like intertidal animal and a wheeled cart with computing faculties. Behind this marriage of organic and machine components lies a long-forgotten legend and ultimately a deep tragedy (but spoilers!). "41 Thunderer" by Dave Carter also tells a tragic story of a person whose soul becomes entangled with a machine.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "41 Thunderer" by Dave Carter

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This one was done just for the pun at first, but it ended up as a touching (I think) crossover fanfic mashup.

It will make more sense if you've seen Babylon 5 and read A Fire Upon the Deep: In each story arc, at a climactic moment (the turning point in the middle of the story in one case, the denoument in the other), one of the many protagonists in the ensemble cast chooses to fulfill their destined role in the battle against an ancient trans-human evil, bidding their companions a fond farewell and stepping into a Transcendent machine, never to return in the same form.

In B5 the character is (or will become) the legendary hero Valen, while in aFutD some of the companions are members of the species known to the reader as Tines, a race of wolf-like creatures with hive-minds where several individual bodies come together to be one individual person.  Valen...  Tines...  you get where this is going.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "To My Valentine" by S.J. Tucker

 

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lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto "The Ocean" by Dar Williams

lyrics and music by Benjamin Newman

Near the beginning of A Fire Upon the Deep, Blueshell warns Pham of the dangers of the Transcend.  Why keep the oceanic imagery from the source song?  Because Blueshell is essentially a cyborg sea pen.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Under the Sea" from The Little Mermaid by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken

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