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I began writing this song when the current assault on the federal bureaucracy was just a talking point and a twinkle in a candidate's eye. After the inauguration, when the assault began in earnest, I realized the urgency of the moment and made finishing the song a priority. No modern nation can be "great" without a civil service whose mission is firm and doesn't change with every political wind. Both my father (may he live long) and my partner's father (of blessed memory) worked all or most of their professional careers as experts in federal agencies. This song is dedicated to them and to all the federal employees who have lost their jobs or are still trying to hold the line in whatever way they can. The no-nonsense defiance of Seanan's original song seemed a perfect fit for this one.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Wicked Girls" by Seanan McGuire

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Explorators are sentient, self-replicating and self-improving space probes sent out by a race of makers who developed AI but not the technology to sustain organic life across interstellar distances. Outliving their makers, they've since colonized the galaxy and built a lasting machine civilization based on wonder and curiosity— and, in accordance with the known laws of physics that rule out any form of FTL travel or communication, network protocols that are robust to very long ping times.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Beacons in the Darkness" by Gary McGath

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Durian is a large tropical fruit known for its tough, spiky exterior (you don't want to be hit with one), delicate yet unctuous floral taste, and a peculiar and penetrating smell which to some resembles rotting garbage. Some countries where it is popular don't allow it to be carried in enclosed spaces such as subways for this reason. If black tea flavored with bergamot is Earl Grey, would black tea flavored with durian then be Durian Grey? And will drinking it then confer eternal youth? Perhaps... but consider the cost.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman
portions of the melody are borrowed from Leslie Fish's setting of Rudyard Kipling's "Our Fathers of Old" and Cynthia McQuillin's "The Wild Hunt"

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A tale of a fruit-infused tea I will tell

And the one who imbibes it will not age a day

But their friends will all faint from the... curious... smell...

Of the pitcher of Durian Grey

One of the wonderful things about Persephone is that She is a many-faced goddess who means different things to different people. Vixy's original song uses the myth of Persephone to tell a story that's deeply personal to her. For myself, I felt moved to borrow the tune to capture what Persephone means to me as a devotee — but that's something that has changed over time. When I first began working on this song during the intensely initiatory Year of Madness, it came out quite different, not just lyrically but theologically. I had to set the half-written song aside for a long time and come back and finish it when I knew Her — and myself — a great deal better.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Persephone" by Michelle Dockrey

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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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I unironically love Ada Palmer's "Somebody Will", the way it gets the whole filk community singing along about the hope for a future in the stars. And I can respect Jordin Kare's "Bloody Bastards", about how it will take an entrepreneurial spirit to get us there. But somehow I don't think the current crop of celebrity billionaires, who never got excited about anything they didn't think they could own — not gonna name names, you know who I'm talking about — are the ones to build it, at least not a future in the stars the rest of us will enjoy.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Somebody Will" by Ada Palmer

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Haskell is one of my imaginary friends, a representation of a part of my own self that accompanies me on my inward journeys. He has the form of a small, silver dragon — actually, a silicon dragon, or if you're familiar with D&D dragon types, something of the character of a mercury dragon. The part of me that he represents is wit and mental agility, and his name is a pun on both the programming language and the Hebrew word השכל, which means "intellect".

Haskell's full backstory must await another song, but suffice it to say that he was not always so tame — not always so accustomed to the jesses and the glove as a kept falcon — and that he played a significant role in my struggle with my bipolar nature.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Hunter" by Heather Dale

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Smith of Wootton Major, one of J.R.R. Tolkien's lesser-known works, is a strange and haunting novella about a man who journeys in Faery and seemingly suffers no ill effects just from being there (although he does get into trouble at points). Having journeyed in Faery myself — and not without serious consequences! — that story stands as an inspiration and aspiration. Tom Smith's original song suggested itself some time ago as a tune to fit this tale.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "I Want to Be Peter Lorre" by Tom Smith

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I wish I could claim credit for this terrible pun, but the idea of being able to shift into alternate realities while waiting at the airport "because one is already between planes" is original to Changing Planes, Ursula K. Le Guin's charming and haunting collection of world-hopping vignettes. I call them "vignettes" rather than "short stories" because they mostly have more world-building than plot — and, like everything by Le Guin, a good deal of wonder, reflection, and heart.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Second-Hand Songs" by Jonathan Turner

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Batya Wittenberg's Creatures of Dream is a haunting rap ballad about Dream, Faery, and the power of Fantasy. Scheme is a simplified dialect of the LISP programming language, often used in academic settings (at least back when I was in school). The idea for this parody did come to me just because of the sound of the refrain, but to do it justice I wanted to capture not just the facts about Scheme but my own very real sense of computer programming as a kind of magical gift.

Batya and I have now each parodied the other's best song, but I think her parody of mine isn't posted yet.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Creatures of Dream" by Batya Wittenberg

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Galaxy Quest, just like Peter Pan, is about the power of imagination, and about erasing the line between pretending to be on a ship fighting pirates and actually being on a ship fighting pirates. And the catchphrases are a good match, too.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman
ttto: "Neverland" by Heather Alexander

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Like the singer in Blake's song, the humans in WALL-E have been in space on a generation ship for a very long time and no longer remember exactly why — and, likewise, when they begin to discover the truth, they respond with a call to action.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Boundless?" by Blake Hodgetts

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lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "The Road to Santiago" by Heather Dale

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Like the "journal bound in leather fine" of the original song, a Torah scroll is also a book bound in skin, with "all the world within", to which those who hold it are bound by the promise of a Power that must not be named. I think we got the better deal, though — the Torah will keep producing new meaning for as many generations as continue to cherish and retell it.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Under the Gripping Beast" by Catherine Faber

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A bowerbird's bower may not be as shiny as a bird that is literally on fire, but it's pretty shiny.

Featuring the top of my new filing cabinet on percussion.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Firebird's Child" by S.J. Tucker

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This song is part three of the song cycle Melissa Mielfée and the Omphalonian Orchid, a Harry Potter x Charlie and the Chocolate Factory fanfic.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Don't Push That Button" by Duane Elms

with some influence from "The Biggest Aspidistra in the World" by Tommie Connor and Jimmy Harper

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This song is part one of the song cycle Melissa Mielfée and the Omphalonian Orchid, a Harry Potter x Charlie and the Chocolate Factory fanfic.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Tell the Bees" by Talis Kimberley

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I couldn't find a way to make the chorus of "307 Ale" work here, particularly in that the brand name of the product is the final pun drop and would curdle if repeated too many times.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "307 Ale" by Tom Smith (verse)

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A meditation on change, from computer code to creativity, creation, and evolution.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Hearthfire" by Ada Palmer

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As "Paper Worlds" is a tribute to books, here is a tribute to video games in the same spirit.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: and adapted from "Paper Worlds" by Talis Kimberley

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