Glimpses of Machinery

Discussing droids among us earlier in the month I recalled some songs about futuristic machines.

The earliest I remember is the fabulous Memory of a Free Festival by David Bowie. I was enthralled as a 12 year old with it vision of young people communing with Venusians and a Sun Machine:

We scanned the skies with rainbow eyes

And saw machines of every shape and size

We talked with tall Venusians passing through

And Peter tried to climb aboard

But the Captain shook his head and away they soared

Climbing through the ivory vibrant cloud

Someone passed some bliss among the crowd

And We walked back to the road, unchained

The Sun Machine is coming down, and we're gonna have a party.

Similar but darker is Bowie's Saviour Machine and it's terrifying mantra of My logic Says Burn! 

President Joe once had a dream

The world held his hand, gave their pledge

So he told them his scheme for a Saviour Machine

They called it the Prayer, its answer was law

Its logic stopped war, gave them food

How they adored till it cried in its boredom

Please don't believe in me, please disagree with me

Life is too easy, a plague seems quite feasible now

Or maybe a war, or I may kill you all

Don't let me stay, don't let me stay

My logic says burn so send me away

Your minds are too green, I despise all I've seen

You can't stake your lives on a Saviour Machine

I need you flying, and I'll show that dying

Is living beyond reason, sacred dimension of time

I perceive every sign, I can steal every mind

Don't let me stay, don't let me stay

My logic says burn so send me away

Your minds are too green, I despise all I've seen

You can't stake your lives on a Saviour Machine

More recently those guitaring geeksters Radiohead described in stark terms modern mans' banal future sung-spoken in a robot's spooky voice:

Fitter happier

More productive

Comfortable

Not drinking too much

Regular exercise at the gym (3 days a week)

Getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries

At ease

Eating well (no more microwave dinners and saturated fats)

A patient, better driver

A safer car (baby smiling in back seat)

Sleeping well (no bad dreams)

No paranoia

Careful to all animals (never washing spiders down the plughole)

Keep in contact with old friends (enjoy a drink now and then)

Will frequently check credit at (moral) bank (hole in the wall)

Favours for favours

Fond but not in love

Charity standing orders

On Sundays ring road supermarket

(No killing moths or putting boiling water on the ants)

Car wash (also on Sundays)

No longer afraid of the dark or midday shadows

Nothing so ridiculously teenage and desperate

Nothing so childish

At a better pace

Slower and more calculated

No chance of escape

Now self-employed

Concerned (but powerless)

An empowered and informed member of society (pragmatism not idealism)

Will not cry in public

Less chance of illness

Tyres that grip in the wet (shot of baby strapped in back seat)

A good memory

Still cries at a good film

Still kisses with saliva

No longer empty and frantic

Like a cat

Tied to a stick

That's driven into

Frozen winter shit (the ability to laugh at weakness)

Calm

Fitter, healthier and more productive

A pig

In a cage

On antibiotics

On my CD player this month I've been enjoying the cyborg imagery of Turin Brakes' Underdog:

Two black lines streaming out like a guidance line.

Put one foot on the road now where the cyborgs are driving,

With the WD-40 in their veins the screeching little brakes complain.

And their starkly evocative Future boy with lines like:

Why are you pushing info into me,

I have no need for it, I'm from the stars.

Perhaps the earliest futuristic passage that appeared on MC back at the beginning was this brilliant but dark imagery by Damon Knight in his short story Masks. It even references a Moon Prospector! 

The prospector was climbing a crater slope with its handling members retracted and its head tilted up. Behind it the distant ringwall and the horizon, the black sky, the pin-point stars. And he was there, and it was not far enough, not yet, for the Earth hung overhead like a rotten fruit, blue with mold, crawling, wrinkling, purulent and alive.

What's your favourite lyric, line, verse or passage about machines,bots, droids and spaceships readers?