The wreckage now has vanished
The waves cavort and roll
I’m riding on a coffin and conversing with my soul
I understand completely now what Ahab tried to do
And if I live to get to land I’ll try and do it too
Consider the shape of the future
The lessons we’ve learned from the past
You must have chainmaille and black leather
If you want clothing to last
“Blood and Black Leather,” some solid post-apocalyptic worldbuilding by Leslie Fish, performed at Worldcon 1998
I’m headed to Wasteland Weekend today! If anybody who happens to see this is there (a long shot, but you never know), please talk to me. I’ll have my guitar. Look for a patchwork tent with CAPITALISM KILLED spray painted on the side.
Was reminded of this old filk song while trying to think of an appropriate goddess of technology. Ignore the AMC Gremlin hatchback gas cap. It’s a song about how sprites of the forest became gremlins in our technology.
Who else would roll so proudly
Across this blasted land?
Who else would bitch so loudly
On every channel band?
Now do they think that no one
Could stay out here alive,
Or did they think us low ones
Were too stupid to survive,
Too stupid to survive?
I listened to this song on repeat for a week after playing all of Tales From The Borderlands in a day. Now I’m thinking about it again because I’m gonna go to Wasteland Weekend (not soon, but it’s never too early to start fake apocalypse prepping).
(Few, forgotten and lonely,
Where the empty metals shine—
No, not combatants—only
Details guarding the line.)
“Bridge-Guard in the Karroo” by Rudyard Kipling, set to music and sung by Leslie Fish. The poem is said (by Wikipedia) to evoke “the loneliness experienced by blockhouse soldiers at Ketting station on the Dwyka River while guarding the Karoo railway track, a lifeline during the South African War.” Thank god for Wikipedia, because I know nothing about the South African War.
@filkyeahfilk and anyone else who likes space stories
Batya here: I’m pretty sure “Some Kind of Hero” was on one of the first filk collections I ever owned, although not this recording of it. “Dawson’s Christian,“ on the other hand, is one of those songs that I heard five different parodies of before I ever heard the original. (My favorites are probably “Dawson’s Mitzvah” and “Crossin’ Myths Some,” a terrible pun of a title for a hilarious crossover fanfic in song.)
“Hope Eyrie,” by Leslie Fish, performed by The Trubadors (Ayelet Dekel, Yannai Gonczarowski, and Roni Goren Ben-Zvi) at Yuri’s Night at Campus Tel-Aviv – a “World Space Party” celebrating human achievements in space.
…and I’m honestly so angry I didn’t know about this event earlier, so extra thanks to @nokama for submitting! It’s held every April 12 (ish) in various locations worldwide. Including Antarctica, apparently.
Running from the future
Running from the past
Running from the mirror
How long can you last?
A song for compassion reborn from deperation, “Still Alive,” by Leslie Fish. Pretty much the opposite of Johnathan Coulton’s “Still Alive,” now I think about it.
Heart like an axle, bounded by your wheels
Rolling down the endless blacktop road
Stripping gears and losing, with every mile that falls
How long can you keep dragging that load
Firestorm is basically a concept album about the apocalypse, but this song in particular is almost certainly about Mad Max. “Heart Like an Axle,” by Leslie Fish.